The night the war came, I felt like time had stopped. Dr. Yakov “Jacob” Gradinar, who emigrated from Ukraine to the United States in 2007, could not take his eyes off the news: bombs, then more bombs. He called his parents in the western Ukrainian region of Transcarpathia. They told him that bombs had hit Lviv, just 120 miles away.
Gradinar begged his parents and four siblings to leave. But no: “This”, they said to him, “is ours”.
In the midst of despair, Gradinar prayed: How to help from the other side of the world? In time, an answer would come to the former orthopedic surgeon in Ukraine, now a limb prosthetic specialist in Minneapolis.
That same February night, Maxym Shevchenko, a 23-year-old Ukrainian army commander, was also stunned. He was stationed in eastern Ukraine, near the Donbass region coveted by Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Shevchenko had rejected Putin’s saber thrusts – until Russian missiles flew overhead. One of them exploded next to him, severing his left tibia.
Shevchenko lay on the floor, thinking of his parents, his sister, and the girl he planned to marry. He realized that his left leg was missing. For a moment, he didn’t care if he lived or died.
Then he saw a friend from the army. The friend bent down and picked him up.
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Almost six months later, on a pleasant July evening, Shevchenko sat outside a cafe in downtown Minneapolis. Four other Ukrainian soldiers were with him. Of the five, four had lost a leg; a fifth had lost both. Nearby stood Gradinar, the 46-year-old Limb Lab prosthetist who, along with other members of Minnesota’s Ukrainian community, secured donations, cajoled U.S. and Ukrainian leaders, went through months of paperwork and figured out how to bring these men here and make their bodies whole.
These five are the first; soon will be over. This week a 9 year old boy arrived, he was missing an arm. Saturday: an 11-year-old boy lost a leg. Later this month: An elderly Ukrainian couple from Bucha, site of the most horrific massacre of the war by Russian troops, the husband has lost a leg.
And then hopefully more. Gradinar has a list of nearly 400 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians in need of prosthetics, who had found prosthetics online for Ukrainians, the organization he founded with Yury Aroshidze, a 28-year-old Belarusian living in the Twin Cities .
As people sipped coffee and wine nearby, soldiers smoked cigarettes and marveled at their new limbs. The man who lost both legs got up from his wheelchair with the help of his wife, and he walked – cautiously, slowly, but remarkably, given that he had been fitted for prostheses two days before.
Shevchenko spoke of the moment he lay on the ground with his leg fresh off, wondering whether to live or die. At that time, he could not know his next trip: months in a Ukrainian hospital, then rehab, then a flight to Minnesota. In his horrible start to a horrible war, he couldn’t see the future. Shevchenko only saw his army buddy, lifting him up.
“And I realized, ‘I should stay up and live,'” he said through an interpreter.
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The war in Ukraine has turned the world upside down. A devastated nation. Millions of Ukrainians displaced in Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II. A global food crisis. Skyrocketing energy costs. A Western coalition reinvigorated by a war where the lines could not be clearer: the West against Russia, democracy against authoritarianism, good against evil.
Against all odds, Ukraine continues to fight. A war that many expected to last only a few days. And with it, mind-boggling casualty figures.
Estimates vary widely, as both Ukraine and Russia closely monitor casualty statistics. Over 11,000 Ukrainian fighters and civilians have been killed so far, although this estimate based on data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project is considered conservative; the United Nations estimates the total number of civilian casualties at more than 12,000, and the Ukrainian government claims that 100 to 200 soldiers die every day. Recent US intelligence estimates put the number of Russian casualties at 75,000.
Gradinar is focusing on a more manageable tally: the 395 Ukrainians who applied for his prostheses.
As the 9-year-old arrived on Wednesday, he lost his arm when a rocket killed his father and half-brother. He is the same age as Gradinar’s youngest children, twins.
Gradinar produced the boy’s passport. He pointed to his year of birth: 2013.
“That’s what shocks you, when you watch this,” he said.
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The war quickly galvanized Minnesota’s Ukrainian-American population, some 16,000 strong. Some have formed Stand With Ukraine MN, which sends money, medical aid, food and clothing to Ukraine while engaging in advocacy and organizing fundraisers, including a Sunday dinner with the soldiers.
Mykola Sarazhynskyy, who came from Ukraine for university and now lives in Plymouth and works in marketing, was horrified by the invasion. “It looks like the Mongol Tatars in the 1200s,” he said, “just hordes of tribesmen, settling and killing pretty much what they see.”
Worried for his mother and sister in Ukraine, he told himself he had two choices: go fight or help from here. He helped out from here, and he became a key connector and fundraiser in the Ukrainian community in Minnesota. They all found each other: Sarazhynskyy, Gradinar, Aroshidze, etc. The work helps them deal with survivor’s guilt. Their assistance was comprehensive: they sent body armor, tactical medical supplies such as tourniquets and blood clotting medication, and negative pressure wound therapy devices to help amputees heal. The prosthetics project has gone viral in Ukraine with the social media posts of a Ukrainian comedian, Viktor Hevko, who is close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Sometimes it seems like things happen by chance, where people connect very quickly on the same goal,” Sarazhynskyy said.
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The first five soldiers arrived on a Saturday evening at the end of July. On Sunday morning, they learned to walk again. Two days later, they marched through downtown Minneapolis as passers-by tried not to stare at them.
Daniel Sivakov, 21, from Mariupol, was standing on his two new legs. His blue-green eyes peeked out from under a new buzz cut from a Minnesota barber, and his face sported a peach fuzz.
On March 21, a Russian drone spotted his unit in a trench in Donbass. Missiles rained down. The friend next to him was killed.
Walking feels like a miracle, he says, even though his stumps hurt. He enjoys America: a meal at Fogo de Chao, a running clinic at the University of Minnesota, a trip to Turtle Lake for tubing, a visit to Chicago, a wartime break. His mother and 4-year-old brother are relatively safe in western Ukraine, but he worries about his soldier father. When Sivakov’s phone rings, he is afraid to pick it up.
While the men were in Chicago, Gradinar and a dozen Ukrainians gathered at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The door opened and an exuberant 9-year-old boy burst in: Artem Fedorenko, his left arm disappeared. His mother, Oksana Shpakovych, is delighted with her son’s new arm; she doesn’t want him to be different from the other boys. Artem is excited too; he loves Marvel movies. “He decided he was going to be Iron Man,” she said through an interpreter.
Outside the downtown cafe, Shevchenko, who lost his leg on the first day of the war, stood up and then sat down, testing out his new leg. He believes in karma, that Putin will receive justice.
For now, he’s watching Gradinar make adjustments to his new leg and enjoying a taste of the United States. “There is no war,” he said, “at least not yet.”
But his medical leave ends soon, and then he will return home to a war zone. Even though he only has one leg, he still wants to be a soldier: to go to the front, to fight for his country.
“It would be the worst if they told me I couldn’t be in the army,” he said. “This would kill me.”
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