“I will train youth”: soldier from Kherson Oblast returns to duty after getting prosthetic leg

Service member Andrii Marchuk is returning to service after undergoing amputation and getting a prosthetic leg. The soldier has been defending Ukraine since 2014. Source: Ministry of Health of Ukraine

Andrii comes from the Kherson Oblast. He joined the army straight after the Maidan in 2014. The start of a full-scale war came in the ninth month of his rotation.

The soldier was in the Luhansk Oblast on 24 February 2022.

Quote: "We knew that we would be attacked, so we gathered and waited for the command. The first day was tough," Andrii recalls.

On 12 February 2023, the defender was injured near Kreminna: he stepped on an anti-personnel mine. Andrii was evacuated to Sloviansk, where his leg was fixed and anaesthetized, and it was amputated in Kramatorsk.

The defender was treated in Dnipro and Rivne for another month; thereafter he went to Lviv for rehabilitation at the Superhumans Center prosthesis, a reconstruction and rehabilitation clinic. The soldier was fit with prosthetics in the hospital, and he will return to duty in a month: as the chief instructor of the battalion.

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"I will train young people," Andrii says.

Andrii had wanted to own a bicycle since childhood, so one of the Lviv cycling clubs invited him to their place. Andrii started riding a bicycle a month after discharge. At first, he worked out on an exercise bike, but now he confidently rides in the streets.

Andrii has a pet - an American bulldog, which he calls Tezka ("Namesake").

"My call sign is Babai. And when I went to buy him, I saw that his passport says: 'Babai,'" the man recalls. Tezka went through the entire rehabilitation in the centre with Andrii.

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