Looking in the mirror, a daily gesture that has become painful for Andriy. Along with his unit, this Ukrainian army officer was hit by shrapnel during a shelling raid in the Kharkiv region in March. Badly injured, the scar runs across his face from top to bottom.
“It’s hard to see my face like this, but thank God I’m alive,” he said into a BFMTV microphone.
Still active in the military, Andriy admits to having moments of doubt. “To be honest, I was thinking at first that I would have preferred it to end for me that day,” he explains.
But Andriy survived and began a long process to fix his face. “When I first came here, I was scared. I didn’t know what was going to happen, what [les chirurgiens] They were going to do. But after a week, when I took the bandages off, I liked it,” she says.
“This is our contribution to the war! To Ukraine!”
The soldier underwent his third operation on Thursday, lasting thirty minutes. “I am going to remove the scars and splinters that he received on the skin of his face,” surgeon Rostyslav Valikhnovskia told BFMTV. Since the beginning of the war, he has already carried out dozens of operations like this, and for free.
“Of course we’re doing this for free! It’s our contribution to the war! To Ukraine!”
A war that doesn’t spare civilians either, like Natalia. This woman who lived near Izioum, in the east, was seriously injured during an explosion that destroyed her house.
“During the first operation, I had glass shards removed, in my forehead, in my nose, and also in my knee,” he says.
A surgery that he considers essential to heal his physical and mental wounds. “Nobody can understand that I’m in pain, that they’re staring at me,” he says.
Source: BFM TV
