I was hit in the face by exploding Russian shell but I’m going straight back to the frontline as soon as I can see again
HERO Ukrainian soldiers wounded in battle with the Russians have vowed to race back to the front.
Colonel Yevgen Bondar was blasted in the face and leg by shrapnel from a Russian tank shell.
But he declared: “Of course I’m going back. Where else would we go? I’m just waiting at the moment until my eye can see again.”
He was defending the town of Huliapole, about 70 miles northwest of besieged port city Mariupol, when a column of Russian tanks attacked — and he blitzed them with British-supplied NLAW missile launchers.
He said: “We took out three tanks and one armoured fighting vehicle. Burned them out. Burned beautifully.
“NLAW is a wonderful thing. It is very simple to learn to use. You can learn on YouTube. Practically everyone knows how to use it.”
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One of the Russian tank shells blasted his position.
Col Bondar added: “We repulsed the attack but fell under an explosion. When they couldn’t dislodge us they just opened up on the town centre with artillery.
“Dismantled a five-storey building. Lots of destruction.”
Sniper Alexander Pavlenko and a civilian were also wounded.
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Col Bondar added: “I was lucky. If it had been a fragmentation round, I’d have lost my sight,”
He was raced to the military hospital on Sunday — but is already counting the days to get back to the front line.
He said: “I can already make out silhouettes.
“They say my sight will recover. I’ll take all the drops to make it heal quicker, or the damned war will end without us.”
Men like Col Bondar and Private Pavlenko, with the patched eyes and bloodied faces, are indeed the lucky ones.
The pictures on the medics’ phones tell the story of a human butcher shop: minced hands, scorched skin and severed legs like joints of beef.
One man’s thighs and genitals had been punctured by shards of hot metal.
Another graphic image showed the sole of a foot sliced open.
Ex-MP Oksanna Korchynska, who coordinates ambulance rescue missions and charts injuries on WhatsApp, asked: “Do I sleep well? No. But I am a paramedic. I have to do it.”
Together with bands of brave volunteers, she has brought more than 200 patients — including five Russians — to the hospital at Zaporizha, the closest free city to Ukraine’s southern front.
I can already make out silhouettes. They say my sight will recover. I’ll take all the drops to make it heal quicker, or the damned war will end without us.
Colonel Yevgen Bondar
Hospital boss Lt Col Viktor Pysanko, 35, said that he did not think twice about saving wounded Russians. He explained: “We treat everyone. It is a basic principle of humanity. We are not animals like them.
“What is the difference between us and the Russians if we don’t give them medical treatment?”
But his solution to winning the war was ruthless.
He raged: “We will kill them all. The more Russians we kill, the more bodies go home to mothers in Russia, the quicker they will understand this is war. They will understand how it feels to lose your husband and son.”
Meanwhile, a green army ambulance screeched up to the gates with a soldier hit by shrapnel.
The bandage on his arm was leaking blood despite a tourniquet wound tight above it. He could walk but winced in agony.
Soldiers on the front have only paracetamol and ibuprofen to dull the pain of horrific injuries. Unlike British soldiers, they do not have morphine pens or Fentanyl lollies.
Moments later, the man in his twenties was stripped and wheeled into surgery. The T-shirt he had been wearing was emblazoned with the national emblem and the rallying cry of Ukraine’s resistance: “Russian warship, go f*** yourself.”
Seven patients arrived at the hospital’s sandbagged gates that day. Lt Col Pysanko said: “It was a very calm day for us. Some days we have 45.”
The former airborne medic was working at a UN hospital in the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo until he was ordered home in the build-up to the Russian invasion.
He said: “Even in the Congo, I didn’t see such crimes as the killing in my country.”
The city is stockpiling medicines in preparation for a siege.
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Lt Col Pysanko added: “Even if the Russians take this city, I will stay with this hospital.
“When the war is finished, we will build a new country and I believe that we will make it.”
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