After a serious wound with a partial amputation of the leg, the officer continues his service in one of the RTCC and SP of Lviv region.
Until 2014, Viktor Chornovol, now a senior lieutenant of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, worked with children with disabilities and engaged in choreography. Now, due to his injuries, he was recognized as having limited fitness and was transferred to work at the territorial center of recruitment and social support in Lviv.
Viktor Chornovol says that when he took up arms in 2014, he did not plan that the war would last almost ten years for him.
During the Revolution of Dignity, Viktor went to the Maidan, and when the Russian-Ukrainian war began, the Maidan hundred, where he was, began to form into a battalion of the Kulchytskyi National Guard.
“But the school year was still going on and I couldn’t leave my job. That’s why he refused, which he later regretted,” says the fighter.
He took advantage of the next opportunity – signed up as a volunteer in the “Kyiv-1” militia battalion, with which he went to the ATO zone. Then the school year just ended. Viktor planned to fight for three months and return to school in the fall.
“That was the first time I saw a completely empty city through which the war had been fought. It was Sloviansk,” the serviceman recalls.
Viktor Chornovol served in this unit until 2019. The unit was becoming more of a police force than a combat unit. And the fighter improved his qualifications at the National Defense University of Ukraine. He says that he anticipated a full-scale invasion, so he prepared seriously. But for now, he retired, lived in Kyiv and continued to work with children.
A full scale invasion
In the evening, on the eve of February 24, Victor agreed with his comrades that if Russia invaded, they would gather together and start working according to a pre-agreed plan. At night, he was woken up by a call and a man drove his car to the north of Kyiv.
“We tried to do something. But the Russians have already entered Petrivka. I stop by Obolon and see that we have no defense whatsoever. I decided to take my family to Lviv,” he recalls.
All that remained was to find where his girlfriend was hiding. At that time, all Kyivans were sitting in bomb shelters and basements. The military serviceman went to her house, but did not find anyone there. He went down to the basement, where the residents were hiding, and could not find her there.
“A few days before that, we had a fight with her and we didn’t talk. I called her parents. In the end, she was found and I took her to Lviv. The road took two days,” says the man.
When he returned to Kyiv, it turned out that the ground defense unit was staffed and there were no places. Victor returned to Lviv and went to the Military Commissariat and was mobilized to the 24th separate mechanized brigade named after King Danylo. And on April 27, he went to the zone of hostilities in Zolote.
Marriage by order of the commander
Viktor received the order to leave for the war together with the marriage certificate. The commander of the military unit married them.
“We have already reconciled and decided to get married. We went to the RATS, but they refused us there: among the documents, he only had a temporary officer’s license and “Diya”, – says the serviceman.
So he turned to his commander. Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers No. 213 of March 7, 2022 allows the immediate commander of a serviceman to certify the fact of marriage registration.
There was no celebration. But the young couple did not want to celebrate then. They took away their marriage certificate – that’s the whole wedding.
“I became the first in the Lviv garrison to get married in this way,” the officer laughs.
You can definitely see your ball, and then there was the Golden one. The unit got into positions near Yenakievo
“It was very difficult there. It was as difficult as it was in Zolote anywhere else,” the serviceman recalls.
The city was completely destroyed and deserted. Viktor was injured in those positions – a mine-explosive leg wound.
“I saw this piece of debris that hit me. Later, in the hospital, I asked the boys and they all said that they saw the bullet or fragment that wounded them. It is not true that a person will not see his bullet,” he says.
And at that moment it seemed to him that time stopped and everything was happening as if in slow motion: there is no pain, you don’t feel the blow, only blood is coming from the shins.
“I look at my leg, then at my assistant. He looks at me. And as silently as in a movie, he takes the tourniquet and puts it on me. That’s the end of the slow motion. I report that I have been injured. In response, I hear: continue the fight,” the fighter says.
The battle lasted an hour. No one else was injured in that fight. But Viktor still had to walk three kilometers by himself to the evacuation point, relying on his machine gun.
“It was an incredible feeling that there were no losses after such a difficult battle. I noticed that when I was in positions, there were no losses. Injuries are not losses. Three more contused fighters left with me. And one of them was later found to have a wreck during unloading,” says Viktor Chornovol.
Neznaiko in the steppes of the Kherson region and Ukrainian lard
After treatment, the serviceman returned to his unit and took part in the liberation of Kherson Oblast.