UKRAINE’S “luckiest soldier” survived five drone strikes and a mortar blitz during a hellish 12 day escape from the frontline that left him with gangrene, frostbite and horrific shrapnel wounds.
Heroic Private Oleh, 38, was given up for dead and his wife and daughter were told he was missing after he was separated from his comrades TWICE during a major winter offensive.
Oleh revealed he was wounded THREE times but refused to give up despite being injured and stranded alone for days as temperatures plunged to minus 14 degrees below freezing.
He said: “It was a miracle I got out.”
When the former sports centre administrator was finally reunited with his wife and 14-year-old daughter in Kyiv both his legs had been amputated as well as the fingertips on his right hand.
Speaking from his wheelchair, he told The Sun: “They cried so much they ran out of tears.
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“They didn’t know for a week that I was alive.”
He shared his ordeal to shed light on the frontline conditions that prevent wounded soldiers reaching medical care.
It took 12 days from Oleh’s first injury to reach the relative safety of a hospital and professional medical care.
At one point he was kept alive by medicines delivered by Ukrainian drones – because it was too dangerous for troops to reach him.
In the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, British troops aimed to get wounded comrades to hospital within a “golden hour” to boost their chance of survival.
But the threat of drones on Ukraine’s frontline and risks to helicopters means soldiers are lucky if they get a “golden day,” medics revealed.
Oleh, from Kyiv, was serving with Ukraine’s 95th Air Assault Brigade and holding the frontline in occupied Russian Kursk – land captured by Ukraine but since retaken by Russia.
Shortly after sunset on Feb 19 his eight man team was ordered to move positions in the bomb blitzed village of Pogrebki, around 10 miles inside Russian soil.
Oleh said said were caught in the open by “bomber” drones.
He said: “They spotted us and ambushed us, dropping multiple explosives.”
Shrapnel tore into his left thigh. His comrades dragged him to the closest building and staunched the bleeding with a tourniquet.
Oleh said: “When the bleeding stopped I could move again. We waited until it was quiet. We thought the drones had gone.
“But as soon as we moved they attacked us again, dropping bombs.”
This time shrapnel hit Oleh’s left shin.
He said: “My guys scattered because there were so many drones, and I applied the tourniquet to my shin myself.”
Half-running, half-hobbling, he limped through the freezing darkness an evacuation point.
Comrades checked his injuries and loaded him into a Styker, a Canadian armoured vehicle, for the journey back to Ukrainian territory.
Oleh said: “We got into the armoured vehicle, driving across the field.
“Maybe ten minutes passed. An FPV drone flew in and hit the vehicle.”
Russian troops shared the videos online. It shows an initial strike on the moving vehicle and secondary strikes when it is stationery.
Oleh recalled: “The vehicle commander said the vehicle wouldn’t go, so we scatter.
“Everyone started running toward the forest line.”
But it was at 800 metres across snow covered fields to the cover of the nearest tree line.
Oleh couldn’t make it and he had to make a life or death decision.
He said: “I couldn’t run after them so I decided to return to the armoured vehicle, because it was armour around me.”
He spent three nights in the wreckage, struggling to stay warm. Temperatures plunged to minus 14 degree Celsius at night and never got above freezing in daytime.
Then he realised the vehicle’s radio was still working.
He said: “I contacted command, said that I was wounded and needed evacuation.
He added: “I waited there three days. I kept contacting them.”
That may have triggered the next attack.
Oleh said: “The Russians figured out that the signal was being transmitted by radio, they sent an FPV drone directly at the radio.
“The drone flew in, destroyed the radio, and I got more wounds from the fragments in my foot.”
By now Oleh had been hit four times, twice when he was on foot and twice inside the Stryker. He had shrapnel in his legs and back and frostbite setting in.
He finally realised help wasn’t coming. He said: “I decided to gather myself, pull my strength together and crawl toward the forest line.
“I crawled for about three hours. I was falling asleep from the cold. Maybe twice. I woke up, looked at the watch, I hadn’t moved for almost forty minutes.”
It took three hours to crawl those 800 metres.
He told The Sun: “I turned to God.
“In hard situations I always turn to God and this was a hard situation.”
When he finally reached the trees he fell asleep exhausted and woke the following morning the sound of what he thought were animals.
He said: “Turned out it wasn’t animals.”
There were friendly troops from a neighbouring unit who were planning to evacuate.
Russian troops had launched a major offensive backed by 16,000 North Korean troops and devastating new drone tactics which focused in choking Ukraine’s supply lines.
Oleh said said the friendly forces pulled him into their dugout and revived him with water and cigarettes. He hadn’t eaten for four days.
They explained that they had a fallen comrade and were planning to evacuate his body with them.
When an Iveco armoured vehicle rumbled up to their position they clambered in as fast as they could.
Oleh said: “We loaded up, started driving. Well, about fifteen minutes later, again an FPV drone hit the vehicle.
Again, the vehicle was immobilised.
The soldiers grabbed Oleh’s arms and dragged him to the nearest forest but they didn’t have time to fetch their friend’s bodybag as the vehicle came under mortar bombardment
Oleh said the Iveco was “smashed into molecules”.
He added: “Nothing was left at all.”
Luckily for Oleh there was another Ukrainian position concealed in the trees – but their dugout was so small the troops inside could only accept wounded Oleh.
Those still able to walk had to continue to Ukrainian territory on foot.
Oleh said: “I was in very bad shape. They placed me in their dugout, and my guys moved on toward Sumy.”
His wounds had started to smell.
He recalled: “I lived with them for five days. They gave me help — medicines, painkillers, so that infection wouldn’t start.”
He added: “My knee had already turned black from the cold, I could hardly feel my feet anymore.”
A sergeant codenamed “Cobra” provided basic first aid and changed his dressings.
His unit, the 47th Brigade, delivered antibiotics and painkillers by drones.
Oleh added: “They fed me, gave me drinks, brought me a bit back to my senses. And we waited for the vehicle to evacuate.”
Footage from inside the bunker shows sever black frostbite on Oleh’s left knee and his right hand.
On 2 March a vehicle arrived but the crew warned Oleh the would visit other “combat positions” and there was a high chance they would be attacked again.
Oleh said: “It was a Sunday, March 2. The evacuation vehicle arrived. They said, ‘We’ll take you, but we’ll go to other guys on combat positions to pick them up. If you want to risk it, you come with us.’
“Well, I had no other choice. My leg had already started to smell of rot, so I took the risk.
“We went through all the positions. Not a single drone, not a single mortar attack. We picked up everyone.”
Oleh was transferred to hospital in Sumy and raced by ambulance to Kyiv.
Surgeons amputated his feet and tried unsuccessfully to save his left knee with a skin graft. But he said sepsis had reached his knee bone.
Oleh said: “They cut open the kneecap and showed me in the photo that everything was already black inside.”
Today he is recovering at a major Ukrainian rehab centre supported by Britain’s armed forces.
Oleh admitted he had struggled to come to terms with his injuries.
He said: “At first, it was hard to come to my senses. I’m still taking antidepressants, a psychiatrist prescribed them.”
He said he felt he had been “abandoned” by his comrades.
He said: “That’s how it was. They knew I was wounded, but everything was unclear there was mortar shelling, FPV drones.”
But time and treatment has helped.
He said: “Now it’s much better. I understand everything, that I need to move forward. Life doesn’t end here.”
He has taken a course on how to make drones, to back the war effort. And he dreams of competing in the Paralympics at Ice Hockey.
He said: “I love — sports, para-hockey. I want to reach a professional level.”
He insisted he had no regrets.
He said: “I chose to join the army to defend the sovereignty of Ukraine. We are fighting for our independence, for our children to stay alive.”