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A Ukrainian soldier said he was forced to cut off his own lower leg with a knife while he was trapped alone and badly injured for eight months — after already losing his other foot, which fell off due to frostbite.
Konstantin Vlasenko, 49, recalled his gruesome survival tactics in an interview with Ukrainian outlet Censor soon after he was finally rescued earlier this month by a hexacopter drone that lifted him to safety under heavy Russian fire.
Vlasenko, who served with Ukraine’s 30th Separate Mechanized Brigade, had been pinned near Kup’yansk, a city in eastern Kharkiv, since June last year, initially with a fellow soldier named Baski.
But he ended up alone when a Russian drone found them hiding in a ruined school on Feb. 16, seriously injuring Vlasenko’s leg and killing his colleague, he said.
“I didn’t save him, and he died on his 50th birthday,” Vlasenko said. of Baski.
Seriously injured but alive, Vlasenko said he was able to crawl into an old cast-iron furnace to hide from Russian attacks that were too heavy to escape.
Although Ukrainian forces were unable to initially reach and rescue him, they were able to keep him alive by dropping food, water and medical supplies from drones.
At one point, his wife even managed to get a Stephen King novel dropped in a survival package.
However, Vlasenko’s left foot was so badly rotten from frostbite it fell off — while his right lower leg became so badly damaged he was forced to amputate it himself, he explained in graphic detail.
“I put it on a brick, took a knife,” Vlasenko said. “Tears were flowing, I had to cut it off. I cut it off. And the left leg, the one with the wound, had already rotted away.”
He added that as the weeks went on, “the bone came out of the skin, and the leg was hanging.”
At one point, Russian forces dropped a loudspeaker urging him to surrender and vowing that they would free him following a prisoner exchange.
He responded, “Russian warship, go f–k yourself,” invoking the famous Ukrainian defiance from the defenders of Snake Island early in the war.
For months, he hid in a cramped shelter, listening to radio transmissions from his Ukrainian comrades.
“It was happiness for me that I wasn’t alone, that I could hear someone,” he said, adding that “it was very lonely.”
Vlasenko was saved after a daring rescue mission carried out using a hexacopter drone, originally configured as a bomber, designed by Gurzuf Defense and modified by the Ukrainian Army to carry him.
In the extraordinary operation conducted earlier this month under Russian fire, a Ukrainian heavy-lift drone lifted the soldier more than 300 feet into the air and flew him 11 miles to safety, Ukrainian outlet Oboronka reported.
The soldier was sent a cell phone containing instructions on how to secure himself beneath the aircraft.
Despite suffering from gangrene and frostbite, Vlasenko was able to attach himself to the hexacopter, which lifted him into the air, escorted by Ukrainian attack drones for protection.
“When we were flying over the river, I was afraid that they would shoot me down, that I would fall into the water. I can’t swim,” Vlasenko said.
He was carried to safety, ending the almost 16-month ordeal, and is now recovering in a Kharkiv hospital, where he faces months of rehabilitation as well as the attachment of prosthetic limbs.
Vlasenko admitted he still can’t “believe” that the mission was a success.
“There are no words. I want to thank everyone,” he said.