Just before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost three years ago, 23-year-old Ukrainian army lieutenant Myroslav Pylypchuk was preparing to become a father. Instead, he found himself confronting the invaders on the front line, where he repeatedly faced death, including facing a Russian tank in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
During subsequent fighting in the Kharkiv region, he stepped on a Russian landmine. The explosion cost him his left leg.
Just four months later, he conquered a mountain peak on crutches. Today he is the father of two young children and lives in the US state of Ohio, where he received a new limb and a new life.
In an interview with VOA’s Ukrainian service, Pylypchuk told the story of his close encounter with a tank, how a tourniquet from an American benefactor saved his life and his path to recovery.
“This tank is already coming straight at me”
In the spring of 2022, Myroslav Pylypchuk found himself face to face with a Russian tank. The duel between the 23-year-old man from the western Ukrainian town of Khmelnytskyi and the enemy tank was filmed by a Ukrainian drone operator.
“This tank is already coming straight at me, its cannon is rising and aiming at me,” he told VOA. “I tell myself: either I shoot now, or he shoots first. I fire the first shot, the grenade from the grenade launcher ricochets off the ground, flies above the turret and explodes. The tank stopped and fired exactly where I was. But all I got was shrapnel that came through those bushes and hit me.
“The tank sank into the ditch, turned its turret and aimed again at the spot where I was, as if I had really annoyed it, as if I had ruined its day. Then he rotates the turret and fires again at where I was. The shell landed where I was, but thank God I had already managed to escape about 20 meters away and the shrapnel flew past me.”
Just two weeks before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, on February 24, 2022, Pylypchuk found out he was going to become a father. On February 24, he packed his bags and joined his military unit in kyiv, where he was living and stationed at the time.
A graduate of the Lviv Ground Forces Academy, Pylypchuk served in the Ukrainian army in the Donetsk region and eventually commanded a company of 80 soldiers. In May 2022, his unit recaptured the village of Tsyrkuny, in the Kharkiv region, from Russian forces.
In just a few months on the front lines, he nearly lost his life three times.
“Shrapnel in one case, a rocket in another, then the tank misfired,” he remembers.
A gift from an American who saved his life
However, Lieutenant Pylypchuk’s luck ran out during the fighting in Kharkiv, when he stepped on a landmine.
“I’m walking at one point, I hear an explosion and I fall. I try to take a step with my left leg and fall back,” he told VOA. “I look at my leg — I was wearing new gear, light colored — and I look at my leg, and it’s already completely red.”
The landmine explosion also destroyed two of Pylypchuk’s first aid kits and all of his medical supplies. He said it was as if he had been transformed into a human sieve: even the scissors for cutting clothes were twisted and scattered in all directions.
However, he wore yet another tourniquet – a gift that Ron Jackson, an American volunteer who had been traveling to Ukraine for years to help the Ukrainian army, had given him just before the war began.
Jackson’s tourniquet was applied around his chest, saving his life. But the landmine explosion completely shattered Pylypchuk’s upper left leg bone.
Doctors who treated Pylypchuk at the scene loaded him into the trunk of a Soviet-made Niva SUV to transport him to a hospital in Kharkiv.
“The Niva stops and I’m like, ‘Where am I supposed to sit?’, because there were already two in the car: one was driving and the other was covering the window, right on the case where, God forbid, sabotage groups showed up And then they threw me in the trunk like a sack of potatoes,” he recalls with a smile.
With each bump in the road, the adrenaline wore off and the pain worsened:
“I felt like Shrek’s donkey, asking, ‘How much longer?’ When will it get better? They drove me around Kharkiv for about half an hour to forty minutes. I held on with all my strength just to stay conscious. As soon as I saw the hospital doors open and that bright light, I closed my eyes. The doctors were shocked that I remained conscious until the very last moment.
Doctors fought for more than six hours to save Pylypchuk’s life, and he remained unconscious for three days. However, the shrapnel that entered his body traveled through the ground and trees, causing a blood infection so severe that his left leg had to be amputated.
Recovery in the United States
Pylypchuk needed a prosthetic leg, but the waiting list in Ukraine was long, so he looked for other options. He calls Jackson, the American whose tourniquet saved his life, who introduces Pylypchuk to Ihor, a Ukrainian immigrant who knew a prosthetist in Ohio.
Thanks to Ihor, who became Pylypchuk’s sponsor when he moved to Ohio, the prosthesis was installed in the United States in October 2022. Pylypchuk also received help in the form of individual donations and free consultations of the prosthetist. In just two weeks – an incredibly rapid recovery – he was walking on his own.
“What motivated me was the desire to live, because God didn’t give me a second chance for no reason. He gave me the opportunity to stay alive,” Pylypchuk told VOA .
More than two years after stepping on the landmine, Pylypchuk is still in rehabilitation and preparing for more surgeries. Now living temporarily in the United States through Uniting for Ukraine, a special U.S. government parole program for Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion, he continues to raise funds and send critical supplies to his fellow soldiers on the Ukrainian front lines.
Pylypchuk has a two-year-old son, Mark, and a daughter, Evelina, born in the United States. He hopes that by the time he fully recovers, the war in Ukraine will be over and he, his wife and two children will be able to return home. He would like to pursue a career in information technology.
For now, he’s focused on his recovery and fatherhood.
“You only have one life and you have to live it to the fullest, without being afraid of not doing something. If you want to do something, you have to do it. And appreciate what you have. Above all, your life,” he said. said.
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