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Denys Denysenko, a 28-year-old man from Kryvyi Rih, joined the National Guard of Ukraine in 2018, right after graduating from university. His father went to defend the country in 2014, during the war with Russia in the East of Ukraine.

After a few months of training in the army, Denys began to go on missions to the Joint Forces Operation area in Donetsk region. When the full-scale Russian invasion began, he was first sent to defend Kryvbas, and then to Kherson region.

On the morning of October 9, 2022, while performing a combat mission near the village of Veremiivka, the soldier exploded on an anti-personnel mine – he received a shrapnel wound to his right leg and lost his left foot. A fellow soldier immediately applied a tourniquet to Denys’ leg. Then he was taken to a frontline hospital in Novovorontsovka.

“I got injured in the morning at 10:20, and the surgery started at 11:00. I was very lucky to be evacuated quickly,” Denys says.

On the same day, the soldier was taken to a hospital in Kryvyi Rih, where he was treated. In Vinnytsia, the man was fitted with a German prosthesis under the prosthetics program of Saving Lives humanitarian project and Ukraine Prosthetic Assistance Project.

“My right leg is almost healed, and my left leg is in a prosthesis, I can already walk. When the permanent foot was fitted, I stopped limping, it became easier to keep my balance, and my speed increased,” the soldier says.

Now the man is recovering in a rehabilitation center for the military in Nemyriv, then he will undergo another stage of prosthetics in Vinnytsia, and then another month of rehabilitation.

“After that, there will be the military hospital commission. And I hope for its positive decision that I will be at least partially fit for military service and continue to serve in the military,” Denys says.