31-year-old soldier Volodymyr Rudkovsky lost a limb while saving his comrades on the front line. But later in Lviv, at the UNBROKEN National Rehabilitation Center, after reamputation, he received a modern functional prosthesis, thanks to which he feels full – because he can walk as before.
All his life, Volodymyr, who lived in the city of Sarny in the Rivne region, was involved in charity and popularization of sports, and at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, he worked in the press service of the city council. During the first months of the Great War, he volunteered, and later joined the Military Commissariat to end the war with Russia. “I was thinking only that this is a historic battle. We have been at war with them not for 100, not 200, but for 300 years. And if God so wants me to die in this great struggle, I will die with honor,” he says.
A few days before going to the front, Volodymyr became a father for the first time and saw his daughter for the first months of her life only through the phone screen – in short breaks between battles during the counteroffensive in the Zaporozhye direction.
Once, on the eve of another assault on enemy positions, his wife wrote to Volodymyr in the middle of the night because his daughter had been crying all night. “My Rada sleeps well at night and she has never cried at night. And it was on this night that there was hysteria until 4 in the morning. I did not understand what was happening with the child. And at some point I write to Volodya,” says the beloved defender. And in a few hours, Volodymyr, who at that moment was already the company commander, rescuing a wounded comrade, will come under fire. How it was – he retells with humor: “I looked down and saw that there were no fingers. I thought – wow! Cool! There will probably be a prosthesis. But the situation got so interesting that the brother I was saving saved his leg, but mine was cut off. It happens,” he shares.
Volodymyr has already entered the NEZLAMNI center for prosthetics. Here, the defender underwent a second amputation. Many patients who lose limbs go through this. After the reamputation, Volodymyr quickly recovered. He attended not only mandatory classes with rehabilitation specialists, but also all additional ones.
“At UNBROKEN, they provide us with great help: both physical and psychological. They work with us from morning to night. In the first days of rehabilitation, my day was scheduled from 9 in the morning to 5 in the evening. And in two weeks I felt like I had two legs,” says Volodymyr.
Today, the soldier has already received a modern functional prosthesis and walks on it. His wife and daughter, who temporarily moved to Lviv to be closer to their defender, accompany him on the road to recovery.
Hundreds of people suffer every day due to Russian aggression, so in order to make their treatment and rehabilitation comfortable and accessible in Ukraine, in Lviv, at the UNBROKEN National Rehabilitation Center, a multidisciplinary team works with every Ukrainian, providing surgical, physical, psychological and psychosocial professional assistance . Thanks to the support of donors, a prosthetics workshop was opened and bionic prostheses are installed, as well as a new modern rehabilitation building: it is 7 floors with the most modern rehabilitation equipment. Every year, 10,000 Ukrainians will be able to receive help here.