27-year-old serviceman Ruslan Slyvka, who sustained a severe injury as a result of an enemy FPV drone attack in the Sumy region, is undergoing treatment and rehabilitation at the UNBROKEN centre in Lviv. The soldier is learning to live without a right hand and with only one functional finger on his left, and it is his beloved, whom he married during his treatment, who is helping him come to terms with the consequences of his injury.
Before being mobilised, Ruslan worked in the metalworking industry as a laser machine operator. In December last year, he joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine and became an unmanned aerial vehicle operator in the 71st Separate Airmobile Brigade. The unit was carrying out combat missions in the Sumy region, where on 30 May the soldier was wounded: as he was preparing to launch a drone, he was spotted by the operator of an enemy FPV device.
As a result of the strike, Ruslan lost his right hand, and only two fingers remained on his left hand. Shrapnel also damaged other parts of his body, and the soldier lost a great deal of blood. Despite this, he made his own way to the evacuation point, covering about three kilometres, although, as it later emerged, he had a punctured lung. At the stabilisation point, medics sutured his lung; in a hospital in the Sumy region they amputated one of the two remaining fingers, and in a medical facility in Kyiv they formed a stump on his right arm.
Two weeks after being wounded, Ruslan was transferred to the UNBROKEN centre in Lviv. Here, surgeons performed a re-amputation of his right upper limb, preparing it for future prosthetics. On his left hand, the patient had one thumb remaining with a soft tissue defect, and the doctors decided to preserve it and restore its function.
First, the medics excised the scarred tendon responsible for bending the finger and inserted a spacer with an antibiotic to form a channel for the new tendon. The soft tissue defect was closed using the so-called “Italian plastic” technique: a flap was taken from the anterior abdominal wall and the finger was sewn to it. Ruslan spent about a month in this position until the flap had taken. He now faces another operation to transplant a tendon.
At the same time, the soldier worked intensively with physical rehabilitation specialists, focusing on improving the mobility of his shoulder joints and increasing the rotation of his right stump. Later he received two prostheses — a mechanical one and a bionic one — and is now learning to use them in everyday life.
During his treatment at UNBROKEN, Ruslan proposed to his girlfriend Diana, and at the end of the summer the couple married in Lviv. The soldier says that it is his wife’s support that has been key to helping him accept his new reality.
“Her support is immense. At first it was very hard to accept myself, to accept that this is how it would be from now on, but I did not have to dwell on it, we talked about other things. I gradually came to terms with it. In the first days I could not even bend my legs at all, she helped me”
Ruslan dreams of becoming a father and, after completing his rehabilitation, plans to start his own business.
The UNBROKEN Centre operates on the basis of the First Medical Association of Lviv. Here, people affected by the war can receive comprehensive care — from surgical treatment to prosthetics and long-term rehabilitation. Each patient is supported by a multidisciplinary team that includes surgeons, trauma specialists, prosthetists, psychotherapists and rehabilitation experts, so all the necessary support can be obtained in one centre without having to search for different facilities.