Ukrainian soldiers are returning to battle after amputation

DONETSK REGION, Ukraine — The Ukrainian intelligence soldier doesn’t know how long his clinical death lasted after an explosive detonated beneath him.

All Andrii Rubliuk remembers is overwhelming cold, darkness and fear. When he regained consciousness in his shattered body — missing both arms and his left leg — excruciating pain engulfed him, and hallucinations clouded his mind.

“It’s an experience you wouldn’t wish on anyone,” the now 38-year-old says.

Two years later, Rubliuk is again dressed in military fatigues, his missing limbs replaced by prosthetics — hooks in place of fingers, one leg firmly planted on an artificial limb.

From the moment of the explosion, Rubliuk knew his life had changed forever. But one thing was certain — he vowed to return to the battlefield.

“Fighting with arms and legs is something anyone can do. Fighting without them — that’s a challenge,” he says. “But only those who take on challenges and fight through them are truly alive.”

Many Ukrainian brigades have at least one, and often several, amputee soldiers still on active duty — men who returned to combat out of a sense of duty amid the grim outlook for their country.

They are among Ukraine’s 380,000 war wounded, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Some 46,000 soldiers have been killed during the three-year war, and tens of thousands are missing and in captivity.

On the front line Russia is expending huge amounts of weaponry and human life to make small but steady territorial gains to the nearly one-fifth of Ukraine it controls. Meanwhile Ukraine, outnumbered and outgunned, faces challenges not only on the battlefield but also in diplomacy, as its once strongest ally — the U.S.— enters talks with Russia, raising fears that Ukraine and its European partners will be sidelined.

It is this dire situation that has driven wounded soldiers back to the front, where little has changed since they first left their civilian lives to defend their families from an invading neighbor.

For them, lying in a hospital bed was unbearable compared to standing alongside their brothers-in-arms to defend Ukraine. But they all agree on one thing — when the war ends, they won’t spend another day in uniform; joining the army was never their first choice.

Rubliuk rejoined the special forces last spring as a senior sergeant in the Artan intelligence unit, training new soldiers and monitoring enemy drones. His rehabilitation began in late 2022, but he believes it never truly ends.

“Every new day is part of my rehabilitation,” he says. His new body, he adds, is a balance between self-acceptance and continuous recovery.

A comrade who was with Rubliuk when the explosion happened and suffered minor injuries, remembers the moment vividly. “I thought he was dead,” said the soldier who did not give his name in compliance with special forces rules.

At that moment, Rubliuk’s life hung in the balance. He was transported to a nearby hospital, suffered cardiac arrest and eventually was resuscitated, said Dr. Anton Yakovenko, a military surgeon who treated him.

After months in hospital wards and rehabilitation centers in Philadelphia and Florida, Rubliuk has returned to take on a role near the front line where, like others who have done so, his knowledge and experience are the greatest weapon.

Maksym Vysotskyi had just completed a drone mission in November 2023 when he took a detour after heavy rains turned the battlefield into a swamp and stepped on a land mine.

The explosion was instantaneous. When he looked down at his left leg, all he saw was bone.

“I quickly accepted the fact that my leg was gone. What’s the point of mourning? Crying and worrying won’t bring it back,” the 42-year-old says.

By May, he was back in uniform, describing the feeling as “returning home.”

“You need to come out of this not as someone broken by the war and written off, but as someone they tried to break, but couldn’t,” he says. “You came back, proved you could still do something, and you’ll step away only when you decide to.”

Vysotskyi now commands a team operating explosives-laden drones on nighttime missions. He assesses risk and makes strategic decisions but rarely goes on combat missions. Despite his injury, he has never regretted enlisting.

“Everyone must walk their own path, and there will be challenges along the way. You can try to escape your fate, but it will always catch up with you,” he says. “That’s why I never had regrets.”

Two and a half years ago, when Capt. Oleksandr Puzikov called his wife to tell her his left arm had been severed, she thought he was joking.

“I will never forget that day,” says Iryna Puzikova, her voice trembling. “When I walked into the ICU, his first words were, ‘You won’t leave me, right?’”

She stayed by his side, traveling from hospital to hospital as he recovered and learned to live with a full-arm amputation.

When he decided to return to the military, she wasn’t surprised. “I never doubted for a moment that it could be any different,” she says.

Before his injury, Puzikov, now 40, was a combat medic. After returning to service, he retrained as a psychologist, helping soldiers cope with the mental toll of three years of war.

“As long as the war continues, I won’t leave — I’ll help in any way I can,” he says.

Yet, his own struggle continues. He suffers from phantom limb pain. It feels as if his missing hand is clenched in a fist, the pain so sharp it cuts like a knife. He hopes another surgery might finally relieve it.

A proper prosthetic remains out of reach due to bureaucratic delays and poor-quality options. Like many other amputees struggling to find a good arm prosthesis, he continues his military duties without one.

After he lost his right arm in battle, Oleksandr Zhalinskyi transitioned from an infantry soldier to a navigator-driver and chose not to use a prosthetic.

“It’s only good for fishing,” jokes the 34-year-old of a hobby he still enjoys.

In his current role, he evaluates missions and finds the safest evacuation routes.

“At first, I did not like this job. When I returned to service, I was ready to go back to the infantry,” Zhalinskyi says. “But over time, I accepted this new role.”

When an artillery strike hit his position in the fall of 2023, severing his arm, the pain was unbearable. He pushed himself up, scanning for comrades; he was the only one who survived.

He tried three times to tighten a tourniquet, but it wouldn’t hold. With communications destroyed and no way to call for help, he had only one option — move toward the evacuation point, forcing himself to stay conscious with every step.

“It felt like I was walking forever.”

Dark thoughts crept in, but he reminded himself of his five godchildren — he had to survive. Soldiers from a neighboring unit spotted him, stabilized him, and got him to safety. From that moment, there was no doubt — once he recovered, he would return to the fight.

But once he sheds his uniform, he has a plan. Before the invasion, he dreamed of opening a pub in his hometown. That dream remains — except he’s changed its name.

Now, he plans to call it Amputated Conscience.

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Associated Press journalist Volodymyr Yurchuk contributed from Kyiv, Ukraine.