Editor’s Note: Ukraine’s Heroes is a Kyiv Post project devoted to Ukrainian army heroes injured in Russia’s war against the nation. Periodically we will tell the stories of these wounded warriors, many of whom need money for treatment, surgeries and prosthesis. At least 1,028 soldiers have been killed and 3,627 injured in the war so far.
A nurse puts a drip into a man'[s arm and pats him on his head. “Don’t
grumble, Romeo and stay still. You’ve got more girls visiting,” she says
and walks away, promising to check on him later.
Staying still is a
problem for “Romeo,” as everyone calls the 34-year-old Donbas Battalion
soldier Volodymyr Shumeiyko in Irpin Military Hospital for his
popularity among female visitors and staff.
While in good spirits, the soldier says he is rather tired of hospital life. “It’s been two months of sunbathing here,” he jokes.
But more “sunbathing” is ahead for the soldier who suffered a serious bullet wound to his leg on Independence Day during the fierce battle now known as the Massacre of Ilovaisk, in which more than 100 troops were killed by Russian soldiers and their proxies.
Ukrainian regular army troops as well as soldiers from volunteer battalions were surrounded near the Donetsk Oblast city for days. Shumeiyko was wounded in the leg on Aug. 24. The injury was complicated by a slow evacuation from the battlefield. “The nearest hospital in Starobeshevo town was half an hour ride away, but it took us over five hours to get there,” Shumeiyko says. The car with the injured soldiers came under constant shelling.
Later the soldiers were transferred to Volnovaha. “From there I called my close friends and they got me out by their own car to Kyiv and then here (to the Irpin Military Hospital),” Shumeiyko says.
Shumeiyko was not in the army before the war. “I was shooting once or twice while hunting,” he says. He started his service in the Donbas Battalion in early summer and, after a month-long training, was sent to the country’s east.
But he has seen combat before as a member of a self-defense unit during the EuroMaidan Revolution, when he was shot in the eye with a rubber bullet during clashes on Hrushevskoho Street. His eye remains bandaged after three surgeries.
He’s ready to fight again. “I am going back, of course,” Shumeiyko says with a determined smile.
To transfer money to help Volodymyr Shumeiyko, send contributions to:
Raiffeisen Bank Aval
Bank code: 305653
Receiver: Shumeiyko Vladimir Vladimirovich
TIN: 2920608153
Account number: 26254240177610
Paymen purpose: card account replenishment 0600573400 Shumeiyko Vladimir Vladimirovich
