After more than 450 days of invasion Russian, thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have been injured in the fighting. Some with injuries so severe that they cannot recover in the country’s overwhelmed hospitals. That is the case of Sasha, a Ukrainian soldier who enlisted in the army at the age of 56. The first day of the invasion he was caught at the front, where he was maimed in a Russian attack. “I was fighting on the front lines against the separatists,” he says.

Now she gets up every morning and puts on her new legs. “A mine hit in our armored car”, he recalls. For months he has been learning to ride in the Zaragoza Defense Hospital. Despite the serious physical and psychological injuries, he does not regret having fought for his country. “Behind me was my family. How could I let the Russians through?” she says.

The state of mind is the most difficult to recover. “One has to work on that experience of trauma because many are losing a friend or relative every day”, explains the psychiatrist Araceli Gámez. Ukrainian associations such as Aura (Association of Ukrainians residing in Aragon) also give psychological support to these soldiers, 58 victims of the war who continue to recover in this hospital. “We feel like a family. Those who hurt tell us,” says the president of this entity, Alina Klochko.

Oleksandr, a lawyer from Kharkiv, spent six months at the front after bringing his daughters to safety. There they shot him in the arm, leaving him seriously injured, although the worst for him were his first days in the trenches. “The first days in the war are difficult and very scary,” he confesses. After having an internal prosthetic implanted in his elbow and undergoing a long rehabilitation, he is afraid when he thinks about his future. “I fear life more than death,” he laments. Despite the difficulties, he does not lose hope or smile.