FROM BATTLEFIELD TO PARALYMPICS: UKRAINIAN SOLDIER’S JOURNEY OF RESILIENCE AND HOPE

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In March of last year, Ukrainian soldier Yevhenii Korinets was gravely wounded in intense fighting near Bakhmut.

At that moment, he thought his life was over. “I was 25, had­n’t seen the world, and now I was dying,” Korinets shared from Reshetyliv­ka.

Sev­en­teen months lat­er, Korinets’ life has tak­en a remark­able turn. Despite los­ing his left leg at the hip, the for­mer mil­i­tary para­medic is now a mem­ber of Ukraine’s nation­al sit­ting vol­ley­ball team. He spoke dur­ing a train­ing break ahead of the 2024 Par­a­lympics in Paris, which opened on Wednes­day.

“Now, I’ve trav­eled every­where – the Unit­ed States, Chi­na, and across Europe,” Korinets said to Reuters dur­ing a break in drills in cen­tral Ukraine. He is among 140 Ukrain­ian ath­letes com­pet­ing in this year’s Par­a­lympic Games. The com­pe­ti­tion holds spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance fol­low­ing Rus­si­a’s full-scale inva­sion, which has left many sol­diers and civil­ians with life-chang­ing injuries.

For Korinets, sports have been vital in his recov­ery, and he urges oth­er vet­er­ans to engage in phys­i­cal activ­i­ty. Reha­bil­i­ta­tion into soci­ety remains a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge for author­i­ties, two and a half years into a con­flict marked by heavy artillery fire and dan­ger­ous bat­tle­fields.

“Sports must be pop­u­lar­ized in towns and cities so that war vet­er­ans aren’t iso­lat­ed,” he empha­sized. “Friends should encour­age each oth­er to stay active and train togeth­er.”

Korinets, orig­i­nal­ly from Zhy­to­myr, enlist­ed on the day Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022. He served as a para­medic in the 30th Sep­a­rate Mech­a­nized Brigade near Bakhmut, where some of the war’s fiercest bat­tles took place.

Ukraine’s recent Par­a­lympic per­for­mances have out­shined its Olympic achieve­ments, rank­ing sixth in Tokyo in 2021 and third in Brazil in 2016. As Korinets pre­pared to leave for Paris, his focus was clear: “Vic­to­ry. We don’t need any­thing else.”