Ukrainian soldiers heal by playing on a soccer team for amputees

Valentyn Romaniuk enlisted in the Ukrainian army the day after the Russian invasion in February 2022. Sixteen months later he was fighting with the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade near the small town of Klishchiivka in eastern Ukraine when a explosion shattered his right leg just below the hip.

They had to amputate his leg to save his life. Romaniuk was only 21 years old, but in an instant a life that was just beginning changed forever.

Oleksandr Kovalchuk, who grew up swimming, competing in judo and playing soccer, had followed his father into the military and was deployed in the Kreminna Forest with the 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade. Last November, he was attacking a Russian position when he stepped on unexploded cluster munitions, which locals call cassette bombs. He opened her left leg below the knee.

It also had to be amputated. Kovalchuk, also 21, had also seen his life permanently altered.

FC Shakhtar Donetsk, Ukraine's most successful football team, can do little to stop the carnage. But in February it took a big step toward helping those wounded warriors adjust to their new reality, becoming the first professional club in the soccer-crazed country to sponsor an amputee team.

“Those who were serving – and who are still serving in the army – are real heroes for us,” Inna Khmyzova, director of Shakhtar Donetsk's social foundation, said in a teleconference. “They are the ones who let us live, let's say, a normal life; to protect us.

“So this is our duty and it is our honor to create opportunities for them when they need them.”

Two other amputee teams have been formed in Ukraine since last year, but Shakhtar is the only professional club to have one. The 15 players on the team call themselves Shakhtar Stalevi, which roughly translates to “Made of Steel,” and they say the physical and emotional outlet the game provides is an important part of their recovery from the trauma they have suffered.

Oleksandr Kovalchuk during his stay in the 12th Azov Special Forces Brigade of the Ukrainian National Guard before being wounded in battle.

(Courtesy of Oleksandr Kovalchuk)

The need for that kind of liberation is great in war-weary Ukraine because the stories of Romaniuk and Kovalchuk are not unique. Although the government has declined to share casualty figures, German officials estimate that between 30,000 and 50,000 Ukrainian soldiers have lost limbs since the first Russian invasion in 2014, according to CNN. The Department of Health in kyiv, Ukraine's capital, says 15,000 amputations were performed in the first half of 2023 alone.

And there will be more, as Ukraine is considered the most mined country in the world, with unexploded ordnance buried in fields, forests, roads and communities in 11 of Ukraine's 27 regions, human rights groups say. The country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates that 30% of the country's total land area is mined.

Russia's war against its neighbor is destined to leave an entire generation of Ukrainians with visible physical and invisible mental injuries.

“Trauma is like being trapped in time and [in] this really horrible event. So people need a sense of security in relationships with others, to create a sense of security in their own bodies,” said Danielle Brown, an associate professor at the USC School of Social Work who specializes in trauma and mental health care. “It really makes a lot of sense to me. “Playing sports, being on a team, working together to achieve a common goal and having to rely on teammates would be really amazing for recovery and healing from trauma.”

Some of the veterans who play for Shakhtar Stalevi remain hospitalized; Others spend hours of grueling rehabilitation each day, trying to regain strength in their injured limbs and learning to walk with crutches or prosthetics.

Many were active athletes before the war, which facilitated physical healing.

Dmytro Havryliuk played soccer and was a boxer before joining the 1st Tank Brigade, ten days before the first anniversary of the invasion. Five months later he lost a limb to a Russian mortar shell near Robotyne, a small village in southeastern Ukraine. The fact that he was in good shape probably prevented further damage.

As a child, Vladyslav Moskalenko said that he played all sports: football, basketball, judo, athletics. He also joined the army in the second year of the war and was wounded fighting alongside Kovalchuk with the Azov Brigade in the Kreminna Forest last fall. His strength helped him move forward.

However, if their fitness helped save them physically, it did little to prepare them for the mental part of their recovery.

“The emotional part of healing from trauma is really being in connection with [and] in relation to others,” said Brown, who also serves as clinical supervisor of the USC trauma recovery center. “Being on a team is, in some ways, like a type of group therapy. Instead of sitting around talking, we're actually working together toward a common goal.

“I think it's a phenomenal idea.”

Oleksandr Kovalchuk lost a leg fighting for Ukraine against Russia.

(Courtesy of FC Shakhtar)

So do the players.

“For me, it's a kind of rehabilitation,” Romaniuk, who lives in kyiv, said through Khmyzova's translation. “There is a team, there are regular training sessions. “It’s an opportunity to distract myself from those medical things, from the medical procedures.”

Kovalchuk, who still spends most of his time in rehabilitation at a private clinic in kyiv that treats veterans, has been fitted with a prosthetic limb and is eager to put his uniform back on once his rehabilitation is complete.

“Of course I can't attack enemy positions anymore,” he said, as Khmyzova translated. “But there are many possibilities and professions that I can still pursue in the army. “I could be a drone operator.”

No segment of Ukrainian society has escaped the pain of war, and that includes football. Shakhtar Donetsk, for example, 15-time champions of the Ukrainian Premier League, have not played a true home game in a decade.

The industrial city of Donetsk, once home to nearly a million Ukrainians, is just 100 miles from the Russian border and has been occupied by pro-Russian separatists since the first invasion in 2014. Formerly Shakhtar (the name translates as “miners”). an ode to the numerous mining settlements that have surrounded Donetsk for centuries; It was played in the modern Donbas Arena, which the team had to abandon, moving first to Lviv, then to Kharkiv and finally to kyiv, where it maintains its headquarters and rents training facilities. .

He played again this season in Lviv, near the Polish border, where fear of large crowds limited the team's average attendance to 650 fans per game, about 300 below the overall league average. In their final season at the Donbas Arena, Shakhtar averaged 33.241 per game, better than all but five teams in Italy's Serie A or Spain's La Liga and more than nine teams in the English Premier League.

“I still remember what it's like to play in front of a full stadium,” said Khmyzova, who has worked for the team for 18 years, before looking for a silver lining in the current situation.

“For the club, it gave us the opportunity to play all over Ukraine,” he said of the team's 10-year journey. “Of course, most of our fans stayed in Donetsk, but at the same time we were playing everywhere. And I think we managed to gain new followers.

“For us, all our followers are important.”

Oleksandr Kovalchuk, center, on the field with his FC Shakhtar teammates.

(Courtesy of FC Shakhtar)

Now Shakhtar Donetsk is offering its support to veterans who literally gave up part of their body in an effort to drive out the Russian invaders and hasten the day when the team can play at home again. So far they have only been able to accommodate 15 players, all men, in their amputee team, which is based in kyiv. And since the other two amputee teams are not very close (Pokrova AMP is 335 miles west in Lviv and ISC Dnipro is 120 miles southeast in Cherkassy), “Made of Steel” plays mainly against youth clubs and adult teams. amateurs.

“We don't have a league yet, for example, so there aren't as many opportunities for guys to play,” Khmyzova said. “We really need to create a league and we are trying to push this issue in Ukraine. We are looking for funding to found other teams, to give other people from other cities and small towns the opportunity to play football. We are working to create this competitive championship.

“They are heroes for us,” he repeated. “That's why we started this.”