Two amputee Ukrainian soldiers are taking on the London Marathon because they want to show that Ukrainians are ‘unbreakable’.
Active Ukrainian serviceman Georgiy Roshka, 32, had his arm amputated in a bunker during the siege of Azovstal, while fellow soldier Oleksiy Rudenko, 28, lost his leg after he stepped on a mine during a combat mission in eastern Ukraine.
Both men currently use prosthetics, which they will be using to tackle the 42km run in London – their first ever marathon.
Mr Rudenko said: ‘We are very eager to start. We’re ready and we’re not afraid.
‘I want as many people as possible to see that Ukrainians can beat the marathon even without limbs and that we are unbreakable and unstoppable.’
Mr Roshka joined the Ukrainian army in 2017 after Russia invaded and illegally occupied Crimea, before taking up a combat position in May 2022 in the Azovstal steel plant, the heart of the besieged city of Mariupol, which is now under Russian occupation.
After being hit by a mine, he retreated to a bunker in the steel plant where his arm was amputated – less than two weeks later, he was forced to surrender and was taken captive along with his comrades.
Mr Roshka said he is ‘still very emotional’ about the atmosphere inside the steel plant: ‘People were in a very bad situation so we were just waiting there for the final moment of our life because no-one thought there was going to be survival.
‘Some people decided it was going to be maybe easier to shoot themselves because it was a desperate situation.’
Mr Roshka was held captive with his fellow Ukrainian soldiers in a hospital in Donetsk for a month-and-a-half before he was eventually freed as part of a prisoner swap.
He said: ‘I lost a lot of blood so I didn’t really care at the moment we were taken captive. I felt really, really bad and I didn’t really care what happened next.
‘During captivity itself, it was really hard. We were humiliated both physically and mentally. We were hit and verbally abused.
‘When the arm was amputated in Azovstal the conditions were really bad and I couldn’t properly treat it there and in captivity I didn’t get good healthcare so the arm started to rot.’
Mr Roshka went through ‘a hard path of recovery, prosthetics, and rehabilitation’ in Ukraine before returning to military service.
He said: ‘This is not only a test of my character, but also an opportunity for me to support my fellow brothers who were seriously wounded.’
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Mr Rudenko joined the Ukrainian army in 2020 and held a position in Donetsk for six months before stepping on a mine during a combat mission and losing his leg.
He said: ‘We were walking through a forest and we de-mined three mines but the fourth mine was hidden under the ground. It wasn’t visible so I stood on it. Then after the explosion I saw that my leg was gone so I quickly applied a tourniquet and we decided to fall back.
‘I was taken to Kyiv first and underwent nine operations and when I spoke to the doctor I asked them if I could run after the amputation.
‘The doctor said that in order to run, I would need a sports prosthetic so to do that they needed to cut the upper leg so this is why I had another operation to cut the leg even more.’
After undergoing nine operations, it took Mr Rudenko five months to fully adapt to his prosthetic leg.
The servicemen are raising money for two injured Ukrainian soldiers through the Citizen Charity Foundation.
Mr Rudenko added: ‘I am running 2024 London Marathon to support as many seriously injured fellow brothers with amputations as possible.
‘My goal is to spread awareness and raise funds for seriously injured Ukrainian servicemen who have lost limbs.’
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