WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senior Lieutenant Oleksandr Popruzhenko lost his sight and nearly died after throwing himself on a live grenade to protect his comrades during a training accident in 2015. He was told he’d never walk again.
Three years later, he’s not only back on his feet – he’s running in races.
He was one of seven Ukrainian military veterans from the war against Russia who joined around 30,000 others in the U.S. Marine Corps marathon, which took place around the U.S. capital, Washington D.C., on Oct. 28.
The Kyiv Post met them at a social gathering organized the day before the marathon by Ukrainian activists in the diaspora.
They had been selected last July from among hundreds who were nominated or volunteered from across Ukraine. One of the main driving forces for the event is Major General Volodymyr Havrylov who, until his retirement in June, was the military attaché at Ukraine’s embassy in Washington.
Before his diplomatic role in the United States and prior to that in the U.K. capital London, he was a senior commander of Ukraine’s air-defenses. During his time as a diplomat, he developed contacts with the Allied Forces Foundation, a British-American foundation originally established to raise awareness and funding for service people wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Havrylov said the AFF worked together with the U.S Marine Corps, to help Ukrainians participate in three marines’ marathons since 2016 – including by raising funds.
President Petro Poroshenko’s special representative for veterans’ rehabilitation, Vadym Svyrydenko, a quadruple amputee, has also been involved, and previously accompanied Ukrainian participants to Washington. But this year he was in Sydney, Australia, with the Ukrainian team at the Invictus Games – an international sports event for wounded warriors championed by Britain’s Prince Harry.
Havrylov, 60, a keen marathon runner himself, ran alongside another blind runner in the Ukrainian group. Together with another non-disabled team member, Kostantin Vinnichenko, they used blue and yellow ribbons attached to their wrists to guide their blind teammate.
Boosting morale
Havrylov said: “It’s difficult to describe how much taking part in events such as this marathon means to the men and women veterans who get the opportunity. Everyone who has been through conflict is affected in some way. For those who have been wounded, sports events are an invaluable way to help recovery from physical or psychological traumas; to regain confidence and boost morale.”
AFF President Stuart Taylor said that members of his group had run in a half marathon in Kyiv earlier this year and that he was planning more joint activities with Ukrainians.
Those who know about them said that each of the participants displayed immense courage and resolution during their military service. But at the social gathering, they told their stories in modest, measured tones, often with self-deprecating humor.
Popruzhenko described in a matter-of-fact way the 2015 training session he was supervising when someone mishandled a grenade and it rolled into a group of his men. “It was instinct, there was no time to think. I just decided that it was better to have 15 people living at the cost of one person dead – me,” said the 24-year-old, flashing one of his seemingly irrepressible smiles.
The blast should have killed him, but he survived – although Popruzhenko was completely blinded and hundreds of small grenade fragments peppered his face, limbs and body. They cannot be removed and the splinters appear as clouds of strange gray granules just beneath his skin.
He suffered spinal and knee injuries, and was told he would never walk again. But within five weeks of leaving the hospital’s intensive care ward, he was completely mobile.
Fairytale touch
But he said the psychological toll lasts longer. “I was severely depressed for around two years. I didn’t want to do anything; I didn’t even want to live.”
All the soldiers’ stories sounded like the stuff of movies and legends. But in Popruzhenko’s case, there was also a fairytale touch as he described how he fell in love with a visitor who first came to see him in June 2017.
And this July, Popruzhenko married Vlasta, who worked as one of the volunteers risking their lives to deliver badly-needed supplies to Ukraine’s defenders.
Vlasta, a government clerical worker, flew with her husband to Washington D.C. and ran the 10-kilometer course.
Everyone in the team said their main concern was to publicize the need to help other comrades recover from horrific injuries and to reintegrate into civilian life.
Bohdan Usharuk, 31, who was taken prisoner in the summer of 2014 and later released in a swap of captives, said: “This is the third year I’ve tried to get into the marathon, and I’m very proud to be here. I’m running in memory of my comrades. Many of the seriously wounded and their families will need help for a long time, and mustn’t be forgotten.”
Volodymyr Karaman, from Lviv, served in a volunteer battalion and was deployed in December 2014 to Pisky, a conflict hotspot in Donetsk Oblast where he worked in a reconnaissance group frequently operating behind enemy lines.
“Everyone in the war has been wounded to some extent, either physically or psychologically,” he said.
Karaman was partnered with Popruszhenko in order to lightly steer him in the right direction using a cord connecting their wrists.
Horrific injuries
The second blind participant, Oleksandr Darmoros, 33, from Khmelnytsky Oblast, served in a special forces unit. In March, 2016, while on a reconnaissance mission in the conflict-ravaged Donbas area, he tripped an anti-personnel mine which destroyed his sight in both eyes, blew away his left leg below the knee, shattered bones and destroyed muscles in his right leg, and ripped through the bone structure of his face.
He is grateful to the many Ukrainian doctors who worked relentlessly to save him. He is still overwhelmed by the “colossal” financial help from the American diaspora, which enabled him to stay in the United States for 18 months to visit some of the best ophthalmic and medical institutions in the country.
Nothing could be done to repair his eyes. But expert treatment has healed his shattered right leg enough to use. And the owner of a company manufacturing advanced prosthetic limbs donated one for his left leg. The American had lost his own daughter and knew the crippled Ukrainian had a nine year-old girl. Darmoros said: “He promised me he was going to make sure I’d be able to dance with my daughter one day.”
But most astonishing were the techniques used to rebuild Darmoros’s face. Until recently, surgeons would have cut out bone from other parts of the body to create a foundation for the new face. But surgeons used a 3-D printer to create a plastic implant that exactly fitted the missing section of the Ukrainian’s face and grafted skin onto it.
He is now studying psychology and may train as a counsellor to other wounded veterans.
Happy endings
The marathon route starts near America’s largest military cemetery at Arlington in the state of Virginia and proceeds across the Potomac River into the capital, passing some of Washington’s most famous landmarks before returning to Arlington near the iconic WW2 memorial depicting Marines planting the American flag after defeating Japanese forces on the island of Iwo Jima.
The full distance is 42 kilometers, but less athletic or severely wounded participants can take a shorter 10-kilometer course. Some multiple amputees competed using hand-propelled cycles or carts.
Halfway through the marathon, Karaman, accompanying Popruzhenko, suffered a muscle injury which slowed him down and started to hinder his blind comrade. Two American runners, strangers until then, but who realized what was happening, quickly took hold of the guiding cord and the trio triumphantly completed the course together in a moment filled with symbolism about Ukrainian determination and American good will.
At the social gathering all the Ukrainian participants, apart from General Havrylov, admitted that even in training they had never previously completed a full marathon.
But none doubted they could, and they each flew back to Ukraine with medals as proud proof that all had stayed the course.
