After being seriously wounded on the front line, 25-year-old Gennadiy spent a year recovering. Later, he continued his military service using a prosthetic leg. And now he has returned to the UNBROKEN center to pursue his dream of running again.
The long-awaited sports prosthesis was fitted to him by the center’s prosthetists with the support of the dobro.ua charity platform.
Gennadiy Tamulevych is from Luhansk region. He decided to become a professional soldier when he was a teenager, after the war in eastern Ukraine began. Back in 2014, Russian troops occupied his native Pervomaisk. So after high school, he entered the Odesa Military Academy.
Hennadii met the full-scale war near Kyiv. This time, as an officer and group commander. He defended the capital for the first few weeks. After that, his unit was moved to the Kharkiv direction. Then – to Zaporizhzhia, where the soldier was wounded in April 2022. On that day, a group of our fighters entered one of the settlements to make sure there were no occupants there. But when they got closer to the houses, they realized that they were already waiting for them. A firefight started. The fight was almost close. Hennadii saw his enemy at a distance of ten meters. He was aiming at him with an assault rifle. It took only a moment for the defender to feel the electric shock hitting his leg. But before he fainted, he gathered the rest of his strength, shot at the enemy and neutralized him.
After that, the defender regained consciousness in a Zaporizhzhia hospital. There, doctors fought for his leg: two enemy bullets had shattered his knee joint and thigh. The limb had to be amputated. Later, he was treated in Dnipro, Vinnytsia, Lviv and even in Germany, where he was fitted with his first prosthesis. With it, he returned to Ukraine, because he decided that he would fight the enemy to the end, even if not on the front line.
The defender did not give up his dream of running again, even if it was on an artificial limb. Before his injury, he used to run a lot and often. To make this possible, he came to the NESLAMNI center. Here, the prosthetists made another individualized stump for him, to which they attached a special active knee and running foot. And for the first time in a year and a half, Gennadiy ran. And he ran his first three hundred meters. He admits that it was not easy.
“You have to get used to it. But the beginning has been made. My dreams are coming true,” says Gennadiy.
The defender was able to buy expensive components for the sports prosthesis thanks to a joint project of the NESZLAMNI Center and the dobro.ua charity platform Prostheses for the Unbreakable.
For reference.
The National Rehabilitation Center UNBROKEN is a unique place where adults and children affected by the war receive comprehensive, qualified medical care. This includes reconstructive surgery, orthopedics and robotic prosthetics. Not only are prostheses fitted to the victims, but they are also manufactured here. The center also provides physical, psychological and psychosocial rehabilitation for injured military and civilians. The goal of the center is to ensure that people with war injuries do not have to go abroad for treatment, but can be rescued, prosthetically treated, and rehabilitated in Ukraine.