Iryna talks with her fiancee Mykhalo Varvarych at Prosthetic and Orthotic Associates in Orlando, on Thursday, February 23, 2023. Sgt. Varvarych, a commander with Ukraine’s 80th Airborne Assault Brigade, lost his legs from a Russian landmine. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel/TNS)
ORLANDO, Fla. (Tribune News Service) — On his hands and knees with four land mine explosives strapped to his arms and legs, each weighing roughly 22 pounds, Ruslan Tishchenko crawled through manmade ditches to place the bombs in a straight line on June 8. After placing two of the mines roughly 6½ feet apart, he briefly lifted his head and noticed someone flashing a light off to the distance in some trees.
Seconds later, a Russian tank began shooting and set off a landmine about 32 feet away followed by another two explosions that threw him over 23 feet into the air. Immediately, the 45-year-old Ukrainian soldier knew his injuries would be bad as he saw his right leg facing the wrong direction.
Fellow soldiers carried Tishchenko into a car with the last land mine still strapped to his right leg as he hadn’t finished placing the mine before the Russians discovered him. After being transferred from the car into an ambulance Tishchenko made it to an emergency center in four hours and was later transferred to a hospital in Lviv where he stayed recovering from surgery.
Tishchenko’s right leg was broken and a tourniquet wrapped around his left leg was placed tight to stop the bleeding from his artery where shrapnel from the explosion hit him. A nurse at the hospital in Lviv later told Tishchenko that upon his arrival his left leg was black.
His left leg was amputated. Once recovered, he applied to Revived Soldiers Ukraine, a nonprofit that could bring him to Orlando for a prosthetic leg.
Tishchenko, who is still in Orlando, will mark the anniversary of the invasion at the annual Ukrainian Festival Saturday and Sunday.
Irina Vashchuk Discipio, founder and president of Revived Soldiers Ukraine, has worked with roughly 21 soldiers like Tishchenko since Feb. 24, 2022, when Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine began.
Since she opened Revived Soldiers Ukraine in 2015, Discipio had helped 53 wounded Ukrainian soldiers before Russia’s invasion. Seven soldiers from the last five years went back to the battlefield throughout the last year and two were killed.
“We see a lot of leg amputations that are more complicated than before,” Discipio said.
To get wounded soldiers out of Ukraine, they must first heal in their hospitals. After, they are transported to Warsaw, Poland, where they get help with visas and then are flown to various hospitals throughout the United States depending on what their injuries are, Discipio said.
In Orlando, where Discipio raises her two children and calls home base, leg amputees are given prosthetics.
“They give us a special rate here and they are the best prosthetic center for legs in the country in my opinion,” Discipio said about Prosthetic and Orthotic Associates.
Revived Soldiers Ukraine pays for each soldier’s visa, flight, accommodation and prosthetics, a process she said is grueling and takes a lot of patience.
“We rely on donations to be able to get each soldier here,” Discipio said. “It’s mainly the Americans who have been donating the most.”
In the last year, Revived Soldiers Ukraine has raised and spent $7 million in between paying for prosthetics, accommodation, flights and a new rehab facility in Ukraine that will open in three months.
“Ukraine doesn’t have a facility like this so we are hoping to be able to treat some soldiers there without having to take them out of the county,” Discipio said.
The facility will have five therapists and one doctor who will be trained in the United States, Discipio said.
Discipio runs the nonprofit with 30 volunteers in the U. S. and other volunteers in Ukraine, a small crew to handle the influx of soldiers needing help after the war began.
“It’s a lot,” Discipio said. “We always need volunteers ... and, if [volunteers] don’t speak Ukrainian, we can have them drive soldiers to and from appointments.”
Discipio houses soldiers and their wives or families mostly in vacation rentals but with so many, she has begun to house some single soldiers in her own home.
“I can’t just sit at home and do nothing,” Discipio said. “I need to help in some way.”
Ruslan Tishchenko, at Prosthetic and Orthotic Associates in Orlando, on Thursday, February 23, 2023. Tishchenko is a sapper with the Ukrainian army, and lost his left leg in a Russian tank attack. Orlando-based nonprofit Revived Soldiers Ukraine helps rehab Ukrainian soldiers who fought against the Russian invasion. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/ Orlando Sentinel/TNS)
With more soldiers injured on a daily basis as the war commemorates one year, raising the money to get more soldiers help and the ability to purchase the prosthetics are in jeopardy.
Tishchenko’s leg cost $30,000 and 28-year-old Mykhalo Varvarych, a Ukrainian soldier who lost both of his legs after a mine explosion, will cost the nonprofit $25,000 per leg, Discipio said.
Tishchenko and Varvarych will speak at the annual Ukrainian Festival at Lake Eola park from noon through 8 p.m. Saturday and noon through 6 p.m. Sunday. The free event will feature live Ukrainian music, food vendors and fashion show.
Discipio has visited Ukraine five times since the war began to visit her parents who live outside Kyiv and brother who is a soldier while helping facilitate getting wounded soldiers out of the country.
During her first visit a few months after the war began the most shocking thing was seeing the thousands of Ukrainians walking toward the border of Poland.
“It’s depressing,” Discipio said. “I just saw miles and miles of people walking and schools are destroyed. There’s just complete destruction.”
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