The horror after the battle – report from a soldiers’ sanatorium

Lisova Polyana The Russian grenade didn’t leave much of Alexei’s arm. On his cell phone, he shows pictures of two fist-sized holes and hanging bloody scraps of skin left by the artillery attack on August 27th. The evacuation of the seriously injured reconnaissance aircraft took two hours. Four operations in military hospitals in Dnipro and Vinnitsia followed. Instead of the bone, Alexei now has a piece of titanium in his upper arm. And two big scars.

The stocky 50-year-old with the goatee moans as he tries to bend his elbow in the gym with a bag that weighs a few hundred grams in his hand, his face turning red from the effort.

“Not like that!” his therapist snaps at him, ordering Alexei to keep his back straight. “He’s strict,” says the soldier. “But I want to be able to move my arm over my head again at some point – and I want to go back to the front.”