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Intense fighting, airstrikes, and the constant roar of artillery – these were the conditions under which Maksym Logvynov, a rifleman and medic, provided first aid to the Ukrainian military. For several months he was on duty near Bakhmut, a frontline town in eastern Ukraine. Since Russia's full-scale invasion, the struggle for Bakhmut has become the longest and bloodiest battle of the war.
"I visited a corner of hell", says Maksym, recalling his service in the town. Before the war, Bakhmut was a regional industrial hub with a population of around 80,000. Now it is in ruins. There are no civilians left, and fierce fighting still rages on the outskirts.
For Maksym, the few bright moments in the darkness of war were his calls home. He always had a phone in the bottom pocket of his combat trousers. He used it to call his mother in moments of calm.
"I knew she would not sleep if she did not hear my voice. For her, it was the meaning of life," he says. Telephone communication was a bridge to an alternative reality of peace. A few words allowed him to survive for another hour, day, night, week. "Mum, hello. I'm okay" was sometimes all he would manage to say while climbing some hill away from his position.
During the war, Maksym never stopped being homesick. He hadn't been in the military before the full-scale invasion and had no combat skills. He was a builder who had grown up in Putivl, a quiet town in the Sumy region. With less than 20,000 inhabitants but a rich history, Putivl lies on the banks of the Seim 20 kilometres or so from the Russian border.
On 24 February 2022, when the full-scale invasion started the town was completely surrounded by the Russian troops. As cluster shells from Russian Smerch rocket launchers were exploding on the outskirts of Putivl, Maksym decided to go to the front. In the spring, after a month of military training, he was sent to the frontline. His town had already been liberated by the Ukrainian armed forces, but another front needed him.
On duty at Zero
"Zero" is how the Ukrainian military refers to the coordinates on the map where the enemy's positions begin. This is the line where intense battles start and things become a matter of life and death.
"Each time you are given a combat mission at Zero, you know that it could be your last battle." Maksym is recalling his hardest mission. On that occasion, everything went wrong at once. The shelling just kept getting worse. He did not have time to call his mother.
While helping a wounded soldier, he missed the whistle of a mortar. There was an explosion in the trench next to him, a loud ringing in his head, a flash of fire, and concussion. The metal fragments of the explosive knocked him off his feet. His helmet saved his head, but shrapnel hit his ribs and legs. His right leg was covered in blood, with two toes torn off and muscles and blood vessels ripped open. Maksym’s left hand was also injured, but remained intact. The main blow there had been taken by the phone, which he kept in his trouser’s pocket hoping to still have a chance to hear his mother’s voice.
Maksym struggled to put a tourniquet on his bleeding leg: "I was losing blood and almost lost consciousness. But I was strengthened by the thought that I had to survive, because otherwise my mother would not." He had to get out of there immediately, but there was no help nearby. The mortar fire was getting heavier still.
"I'll have to evacuate on my own", Maksym decided. Gritting his teeth, he crept in the direction where the Ukrainian military were supposed to be. He had to crawl on the palms of his hands over gravel and rubble. He was in shock so he is not certain how far he travelled, but the skin on his hands was completely stripped off.
"His aunt, visiting the hospital with his mother, asked him why his palms were so bashed up. He replied: ‘Aunt Lyus, I've been crawling wounded on my hands for what seems like an eternity.'" But saving his own life was worth all the suffering. Close to the Ukrainian positions, Maksym was picked up by volunteers and taken out of the line of fire. It took him four hours to get to the medics. In the hospital closest to the front, he underwent a blood transfusion. In the next hospital further back, his toes and heel were amputated. But even this was not the end of his troubles.
“Mum, I don‘t have a leg any more”
Maksym received most of his medical care in a hospital in Kharkiv, a major city in eastern Ukraine. When he woke up in the morning after his surgery, he immediately called home: "Mum, I don't have a leg any more. The doctor said it was necessary to save my life." Because Maksym's evacuation took hours , amputation could not be avoided. Helping Maksym to withstand the blow was the knowledge that pure luck had saved his other leg.
After a long convalescence, the hero finally came home. But his return was the beginning of a difficult journey. Maksym would have to learn to walk again.
The wounded soldier's mother, Tatyana, is now taking care of him at home. "He sometimes dreams about those terrible days, hours and minutes. He still wakes up screaming", she says.
Maksym's family is not wealthy. A proper rehabilitation course was all but unaffordable for them. But both Putivl residents and other Ukrainian volunteers chipped in to help. At first, Maksym was fitted with modern crutches, without which it was simply impossible for him to move around on a single leg.
But this winter, after the first snow fell, the crutches reached their limits. To get to the hospital from home on the icy ground, the mother had to drag her son on a sled. Once again, she put her faith in the support of others.
Wounded but unbreakable
It was thanks to these donors that Maksym was admitted to the Ukrainian National Rehabilitation Centre. Known as "Unbroken", this is a unique hospital in Lviv where war veterans receive specialist medical care. The centre's areas of expertise include reconstructive surgery, orthopaedics, and prosthetics.
After receiving preparatory treatment at this centre, Maksym is now waiting for his artificial limb. Unfortunately, he can only dream of a state-of-the-art bionic prosthesis: that is too expensive. But his main goal now is to stand on two legs and learn to walk again.
This hero's biggest dream is simple and very human: to go fishing on foot from home to the Seim River. That should not be impossible for a man who escaped from hell itself.
This article was published in partnership with the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, within the Voices of Ukraine project by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom and the German foreign ministry.
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