Soldier Serhii Ponomarenko, call sign ARAB

I am 36 years old. I have a wife and two children. In 2023, I was called up to defend my homeland. I completed my training abroad. When I returned, I was sent to the Zaporizhzhia direction.

On the 31st of December, 2023, while performing a combat mission in Robotino village, I was seriously wounded by a drone drop.

Realising that it had hit me, right on my feet, I started to take out a tourniquet and apply it to my left leg. After that, I radioed that I was "cargo 300s" (meaning wounded), and immediately lost consciousness.

I don't know what happened next, because I came to my senses only in Lviv in a hospital where I was undergoing dialysis. Lying on a hospital bed, I felt that I was missing something. Lifting the blanket, I noticed tubes coming out of my body where my legs used to be. That's when I realised I was missing my both lower limbs. 

But, thanks to the support of my family, I didn't have the stress of losing my legs. I was alive! And this is the most important thing for me and my family.

I am grateful to my comrades who pulled me out of that hell. Even to this day, I still don't know who pulled me out.

Now I am undergoing rehabilitation at the Halychyna Centre for Comprehensive Rehabilitation and preparing for prosthetics.

Specialists warn that the prosthetics will be difficult, as it is difficult to make two prostheses at once, but even more difficult to master them. 

I have a very high level of amputation on my right lower limb - a hip disarticulation. In order to be mobile and move freely, I need a functional prosthesis with a comfortable hip joint, the budget of which is higher than the state programme covers. This is why I have to ask for help from charities and all those who care.
 

COLLECTED AND TRANSFERRED: UAH 219,258.20