Ukrainian soldier Serhii sits on his hospital bed in a public clinic in central Ukraine. He has small pieces of shrapnel embedded in his legs that doctors cannot recover. Despite the pain, he says he feels lucky to be alive.
“I can’t believe I’m in the hospital now and not in the trenches. I didn’t think I’d survive,” says the 36-year-old.
Serhii is an infantry soldier of the 80th Galician Air Assault Brigade. He enlisted in the military shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, leaving Finland, where he had been living and working as a maintenance worker for the previous 10 years. In a nod to his past, they gave him the callsign “Fin.”
A month ago, on October 27, he and his unit were assigned a mission: to hold the trenches of the eastern front line outside Bakhmut. The mission was supposed to last three days, but was extended by two weeks after the unit was pinned down by enemy fire. For some of the men, it would be the last mission of his life.
The unit had been under constant shelling for several days when a mortar exploded near the shelter Serhii and two other men were in, isolating the group just as they were about to change position.
“We were all injured. I was injured in both legs and I immediately touched them to see if they were still there,” Serhii recalls.
The other two soldiers had broken legs and jaws. One of them was so shocked that he asked to commit suicide, so the others took the gun from him. When the evacuation team arrived, Serhii insisted that they take the other men first and that he would wait for the next opportunity.
But that opportunity never came. Every time other units arrived, constant Russian bombing kept them pinned down and unable to reach Serhii.
Multiple evacuation teams would attempt to reach Serhii over the next two weeks, but none were able to make it and some died in the attempt.
“We were under constant enemy fire. The enemy seemed to look for our weak points or test our resistance,” he recalls.
With Serhii confined to his trench, his commander used a drone to deliver essential items such as water, painkillers, chocolates, and even cigarettes.
“At the same time, Russian drones were targeting the shelter with more sinister payloads, and one of them lobbed a grenade right next to Serhii, who at that moment had been joined by another isolated Ukrainian soldier.”
For the next three days, Serhii hid in his shelter surrounded by the enemy. Every hour the Russian troops came closer and closer to his position. Believing he would not survive, Serhii contacted his commander by radio and whispered the enemy’s coordinates.
Thanks to Serhii, the Ukrainian artillery made several accurate attacks, but more Russian soldiers continued to take up positions around them.
“I was surrounded by enemies,” Serhii explained. “When they couldn’t hear me, I whispered the coordinates over the radio again and our artillery fired on them.”
At one point, Serhii thought his time was up when a Russian soldier climbed into his shelter. The soldier asked Serhii where he was from and the Ukrainian responded in Russian that he had a concussion and asked for water. The Russian soldier did not give him water, but instead crawled out of the trench, apparently not realizing that Serhii was Ukrainian.
With all efforts to evacuate Serhii exhausted, his commander ended up telling him that the only way out was to crawl and pray.
“I had to crawl across the pit where the Russians were. Holding the radio with my left hand on my knees, I started to crawl. I found a trip wire with a grenade. I could hear the commander on the radio correcting me, but I couldn’t contact him. The battery was almost depleted. The commander yelled at me to move. I finally reached the Ukrainian positions. ‘End, keep moving,’ they told me.”
Serhii has been recovering for more than two weeks. Sitting in the warm hospital ward, he remembers how he licked the rainwater from his trench and dreamed of every sip.
In telling his story to CNN, Serhii sees nothing heroic in his actions.
“You should see what our men do on the front. How they fight, evacuate, and rescue their comrades. Our boys are paying a very high price. They pay with their blood. All I want is to go fishing with my colleagues, drink some beers and sit in silence.”