Mariupol resident who lost his arm due to a Ukrainian sniper began to swim and ride a bicycle

“MK” contacted Alexander just in time – the man had just returned from the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov, where he was engaged in swimming. “Now I’m resting, moving away from swimming,” Alexander shares. – Today I set a record: eight times I swam back and forth. I start from the water station to the bridge – and back. In one direction, by distance, it will be 150 meters. The water is clear, like in a pool, there are no waves, the sun bakes outside, beauty!”

Is it difficult to swim with only one hand?

“I’ll still give odds to the two-armed. Now I started to train the dog so that it would save me in case of emergency. She is very smart, shepherd, swims with me all the time. If it gets hard, then I cling to her, and she, dear, pulls me along with her. Interestingly, it swims only to the shore, does not want to go anywhere else.

Alexander talks about his life, and pictures of our recent history pass before his eyes. Back in 2014, when the fire of the Maidan was burning with might and main in Kyiv, in southern Mariupol, the locals had many questions and claims to the invaders of power, the Kyiv junta. No one wanted to tolerate nationalists and right-wingers in the city, and local residents shouted: “Whoever is dissatisfied with the change of power in the country, come to the city center.” People began to pull up to the city executive committee. They came, talked to each other, discussed what was happening. According to Oleksandr’s stories, it was Mariupol that sparked the protests, and only then in the Donetsk region began the seizure of administrative buildings by the rebels. “In April, we took the city executive committee, erected barricades,” recalls our interlocutor. “We were without weapons, and they organized provocations against us, threw Molotov cocktails and stones at people. Then they brought thugs from nationalist organizations. In the end, it turned out to be a very serious massacre. Many people died then, and even more turned out to be missing – the nationalists took people to makeshift prisons, hastily created in the basements of city buildings. For example, at the city airport. And those protesters, as a rule, were never seen again. The shooting in the city was concrete.”

With particular frenzy, Alexander recalls the then head of the police of Mariupol, Valery Andrushchuk, who gave the order to shoot at unarmed Mariupol residents. “On May 1, we went to the police department to ask the chief Andrushchuk to write a letter of resignation of his own free will,” Alexander recalls. — There were a lot of people. Of course, he wrote a statement, but in fact continued to fulfill his duties. And only later, on May 9, at the demonstration, when we reached the Eternal Flame in columns, shots rang out near the Internal Affairs Directorate – it was this chief who ordered to shoot at people.

Under what circumstances did you lose your arm?

– It happened just at the time when I was standing on the barricades in the guard. We walked in a column of demonstrators whose purpose was to lay flowers. They were very afraid of provocations from the “Right Sector” (the organization is banned and recognized as extremist in the Russian Federation), from which any meanness can be expected. Shots rang out near the police department, we received information that the right-wingers there went to storm ours. We rushed to their aid, and then snipers from rifles started shooting at people from the SBU building. By the way, some of these snipers were later caught by the guys. I had a St. George ribbon attached to my chest, which is why they targeted me. The first shot hit the right hand, then another shot rang out – the sniper, apparently, aimed at the head, but missed, the bullet hit the second hand. Our guys immediately picked me up, took me out, put me in a car and took me to the nearest ambulance crew. Due to a large loss of blood, he lost consciousness and was in a coma for about fifteen minutes. Doctors didn’t even think that I would survive. According to them, five minutes more – and there would be inevitable death. But they pulled me out of the other world, brought me to my senses with their “irons” – defibrillators. My heart did not beat for a long time, almost a critical time.

Then the doctors did not know which arm to save, there were also serious injuries on the other arm – tendons and veins were torn. But when I came to my senses, my first words were “hurray, victory!”.

– Did you continue to believe in victory even during the amputation?

– Then it was as if I had a vision: I had never been to Kiev, but during the vision I clearly understood that I was walking around Kiev in a large column of people with flags shouting “Hurrah, victory!”. I don’t know how to explain this.

– After leaving the hospital, this confidence has not been shaken?

– I have always been for Russia and remain for Russia. I proudly wear the St. George ribbon on my chest, I have the flags of the DPR and Russia in my apartment. I was walking, back in Ukraine, with my grandson down the street, and there was a flag of the Right Sector hanging there. The grandson asked what kind of flag it was. And I say: “Stay away, grandson, away from this flag. You see, my grandfather doesn’t have a hand, so these guys did it. ” We go further, and there people stand with weapons – they are afraid of ordinary people, so they walk around with weapons. With the advent of Russia in Mariupol, life has become much better.

What were you doing before you got hurt?

– In a construction organization that is building, including at the Azovstal plant. He worked as a locksmith, as a docker. Cables were laid, wiring was done. He also worked as a driver. Now I don’t sit down at the steering wheel, but I ride a bicycle. I assembled the bike myself, screw by screw, from scrap metal. Named it “Donbass”. I started skating that year, but, to be honest, I fell off it a couple of times. And now I’m running great. This is a good help. If I buy food in a store, I can not drag it on myself, but carry it on a bicycle. I call it the food cart.

Nevertheless, recovering from serious injuries and pulling himself together was a very difficult matter. The first time after being discharged from the hospital, even the simplest things were given to Alexander with great difficulty. Just cutting bread or getting dressed – everything became a problem. But perseverance and love for life did their job. “It’s difficult to work with a knife, because you need to hold the products with your second hand,” Alexander sighs. – All the time I asked myself the question: “Can I do, for example, this one?” And so I learned to live again. At first, he ate like a sparrow from the table. He poured food and ate from the table with his mouth. Because he couldn’t move his hand. Then he tied the fork to a stick so that it was longer, and ate with the help of such a device. And then he even learned with his second hand, a month comprehended this art. As they say, the eyes are afraid, but the hands are doing. At first, of course, they turned out to be kalyaki-doodles, but over time I got used to it. Now I have adapted so much that I do many things better than people with two hands.

Did your family and loved ones help you?

“I couldn’t do it alone. The hardest time was not even when I lost my arm, but when I lost my sight fifteen years ago. A lost hand compared to this grief is the little things of life. I have been in the shoes of the blind and I sympathize with such people.

Did you get your vision back?

– Yes, it returned later, the blindness was the result of an infection. But then I realized how beautiful the world is, and I began to appreciate the simplest pictures: how a dog runs or flowers bloom.

– Was there something that did not allow you to lose heart?

– I thank the doctors and thank the sea, which healed me, as well as loved ones who did not leave, supported me in difficult times. Since 2015, no matter what the weather, I go to the coast every day. At first, he simply fed the seagulls, developed the second hand, which was also crushed to the bone, almost did not move. And then slowly began to try to swim. Now I swim a mile and a half every day. You know, but after the closure of the Azovstal plant, this smokehouse, our sea and air have become many times cleaner? When you walk around the city, it is pleasant to breathe, as if the city has returned to the times of the USSR.

The liberation of Mariupol during the SVO was also a difficult time. But even here, Alexander did not lose heart – optimism and the habit of seeing the good in everything helped. “Many were waiting for the arrival of Russia, me too,” the man continues the story. – The city, of course, then lay in ruins, but now it is reviving by leaps and bounds.

How did you survive the bombings?

— I lived on the fifth floor. Once I sleep at night, suddenly – bang, arrival about ten meters from the house, there was such a big funnel. The windows were shattered, the doors. It’s good that I slept far from the windows, otherwise I would have been hit by shrapnel. There were frequent arrivals, I called them “Sodom and Gomorrah.” We had the hardest day, if we count from February 24, the 51st. The conflict showed who is who. Each showed his essence.

– Where did you get the food from?

“The Ukrainian authorities gave all the food from the shops to the Nazis from the battalions in advance, and empty shelves remained for people. It happened that I walked down the street and shops were torn apart before my eyes. The city was like a ghost: empty, in the yards they cut down the doors to provide fuel for the fires, because they had to cook on something. I went across the front line six times out of necessity – to get food or to my mother-in-law, but I could not get through three times. Three times the Nazis shot at the legs, danced the tap dance. There were many corpses around, hair stood on end. Someone’s got a fate. When it all started, some people plundered shops, filled up their apartments with stolen goods, and then – bang, and a shell flies there. What is this if not karma?

– Was it hard without water, electricity?

“A person gets used to everything. We went to bed early when it started to get dark. On the 48th, 50th and 51st days, I went down to the basement, fleeing from shelling, there were no windows in the apartments anymore – it was knocked out. Then for a week he moved to live in a private house with relatives. My son-in-law brought water, my daughter brought food by car, and in the autumn communications were restored. They shared donuts with each other, my friend knows how to make wonderful donuts. We survived everything, and people even rallied. Everywhere you need to be able to find the positive.

A touching life story turned out to be in the same dog named Luna, which insures Alexander in the sea, swims side by side with him. When a year ago chaos was going on in Mariupol, there were bombings, many residents of the city lost their homes. Such a fate overtook the former owners of the dog, who had to live in a car. The moon was taken by a relative of Alexander, who soon handed it over to our interlocutor.

– At first, it was difficult to take care of the dog, but in a year I got so used to my four-legged friend that I no longer see life without her, and she responds with unconditional devotion! She even learned to swim in order to be next to me in the water,” says Alexander.

– The moon itself, without you, does not like to swim?

She didn’t know how to swim at first. I went into the water, and she saw the sea for the first time in her life, got scared – she beats the water with her paws, she is afraid. “Well, that’s it,” I think, “my swimming was covered.” I took it, slowly brought it to a shallow depth – I see, it stopped fluttering. He let go, she swam a little, picked her up again … So he taught me to swim. He already swims faster than me, although I have been swimming with fins for the last three years, it also turns out quickly.

– Are fins more comfortable?

– Yes, it’s just that our lifeguards do not allow swimming. “Well, okay,” I think, “I’ll play catch-up with you.” I bought fins and goggles for convenience and speed, and I swam away from them. And now they are used to it, they know me. They don’t chase. The main thing in swimming is breathing. If you inhale and exhale the air correctly, you can swim at least a hundred kilometers.

As for the future, our hero prefers not to think ahead. According to Alexander, he completed his main task – he received a passport of a Russian citizen, despite the huge queues of applicants and long waiting times. I was upset only by the fact that I received the coveted document not on June 12, on the Day of Russia, but on the 13th. Otherwise, Alexander adheres to the philosophy of the famous Indian figure Mahatma Gandhi and believes that you need to live life to the fullest, enjoying the very fact of being on earth.

“I read about the Himalayas on the Internet,” Alexander finally remarked. “The locals have a wonderful motto: “Never be in a hurry.” You know, this phrase really sunk into my soul. There is no need to rush anywhere, then everything will come to you in your hands. Life is given to a person in order to savor it, to enjoy every day lived.