Overcoming adversity in civilian life: the coach training kids for Ukrainian championships despite his prosthetic leg

"I saw my brother's eyes before the operation. He is 50 years old, and he is going to lose his leg. How do you start a new life at this age?" – six months ago, his sister Lilya said about soldier Yuriy Furyk, who had his leg amputated after being wounded.

Then he was learning to walk. Now the veteran is working. He has returned to his favorite job, which he did for 30 years before the full-scale war: he trains children at a sports school in Kolomyia, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast.

We enter the gym with equipment. It is empty for now, as the students will come later. A short, sturdy man in a hoodie with the coat of arms of Ukraine leans against a gymnastics horse. With a smile that is commonly called charming, he resembles Yuri Gagarin, the world's first astronaut. And his name is the same too.

The pant leg on his left leg is rolled up above the knee, and he wears a prosthesis below.

"I dozed off for a minute and heard: ‘Zdravstvuyte’. Well, I thought that's it."

Yuriy Furyk went to war as a volunteer on February 27, 2022, because "a man's mission is to defend his family and country, and missiles were flying at my sister in Kyiv." He was enlisted as a machine gunner in the 128th Transcarpathian Mountain Assault Brigade. There he received the call sign "Gymnast".

He recalls how, for the first time in his life, he heard the whistling of bullets above him: "I was telling the guys something in a makeshift kitchen in the field. We were heating stew on a gas burner. Suddenly I hear: phew, phew. My brothers-in-arms sat down, and I did not realize what was happening. Then I realized that they were shooting at me."

In late December, there was one memorable night near Soledar.

Yuriy gets immersed in memories: "Our company retreated and formed a line of defense. 12 soldiers, including me, were thrown forward to stop the enemy. It was then that the Wagnerites were thrusting, there were many of them. 

And here we are in the plantation. And opposite us is another one, the enemy has occupied it. There are 70 meters between us, we can see them through thermal imagers, they are looking at us. We could feel the tension, we were whispering. 

And there were so many of them that we realized that if they set off, we would all die. They were being brought in like crazy,not sparing them at all. They took Soledar with these storms. I dozed off for a minute with one eye open and heard: ‘Zdravstvuyte’. Well, I thought, that's it, I'm captured."

But for some reason, the Russians did not set off that night: either the presence of this group of Ukrainians or the fear that the field between them was mined stopped them.

In the morning, as soon as it got gray, they started calling on the radio to tell which of the soldiers should leave the position. Everyone was taken away, and Furyk was left alone.

"I was standing alone, confused, not knowing what to say. And in front of me are the Russians. My boys are saying their goodbyes: ‘Wait, your replacement will come’. And then, at the last moment, they receive a radio message: ‘And take the machine gunner, take the machine gunner over there’. You can't imagine how I ran after them. Such bliss!"

The Russians took an empty position. But the Ukrainians managed to build a defense line overnight.

"They had to save either me or my leg"

The next day, Yuriy was thrown to another location, to reinforce the stormtroopers.

"I was flying there like on wings, I completely lost my fear: this position is different for me, and I have my own people around me. We were getting shot at, but it seemed to me that everything was safe. I was walking to the spot and shooting anti-personnel Petal mines that came across on the way," he says animatedly. "We took a position with the guys and started digging in. I wanted to cut the corner to stand in the trench and look at the path so that the enemy would not pass. Suddenly, there was a big bang. Something came flying. I rolled into the mud. I heard two more screaming."

Then three soldiers were wounded. All of them in the arms and legs as body armor saved important organs. This happened on December 27, 2022.

"I'll never forget the face of the medic. It was wet. And his hands were bloody. I was his eighth patient that day," the soldier recalls.

Yuriy had a piece of shrapnel lodged in his shin. It would seem that they had to remove it and sew up the wound. But the doctors examined it, and everything inside was burned. Nerves, blood vessels, and blood supply stopped. Six surgeries in eastern Ukraine failed, so on January 31, Yuriy was examined by a medical consultation in the capital.

"They said I needed another surgery, and they would try to save my leg. But I already realized that they would cut it off, because it was dying. The whole body was intoxicated, and they had to save either me or my leg," the fighter says, propping his chin on his palm. This is a frequent gesture of his. "I was given a lot of other people's blood, and almost none of my own remained.”

"Good afternoon!" says a boy of about 12 years old who has entered the room.

"Hi, Zakhar, how are you feeling? Can you train? I'm going to torture you now," Yuriy scans the teenager's figure. He carelessly jumps on the trampoline until the lesson begins.

Gradually, the room fills with children. They are running, doing flips and cartwheels under the supervision of another coach. They are laughing. We continue to talk with Yuriy about the war and wounds as something familiar and quotidian.

Nine months after being wounded, he went to the gym

On the third day after the surgery, Yuriy stood up.

"My only motivation was to live. I can’t let anyone see me give up. I brushed aside thoughts of the distant future. I decided that I would think about small tasks for each day. I still had all sorts of tubes and jars hanging on me, but I left. Going to the toilet by yourself is already a big feat. Not everyone can do it, but I did it."

Two weeks later, he was in a rehabilitation center in Lviv Oblast. There, the wounded were divided into two conditional camps: "athletes" and those who numbed their pain with alcohol. The former followed each other's successes and tried to surpass them. The latter never got on crutches, moving around in wheelchairs because it was more convenient. They were given prostheses, but they never used them.

Yuriy's sporty spirit and habit of discipline did the trick. He quickly got used to the prosthesis and even danced with rehabilitation therapists and masseuses. But he realized that he would never be able to jump and do flips again. He was missing his knee, one of the most important joints that cannot be replaced by mechanical or bionic ones.

Yuriy decided that he would try to return to work because he loved it. He had been a gymnastics coach for many years! If he succeeds, he will succeed. If not, he would look for something else.

The students were waiting for this return. They sent encouraging, touching videos that brought tears to his eyes: love and support were felt from a distance.

Nine months after his injury, Yuriy Furyk walked into his gym in Kolomyia. Some of the children threw their arms around his neck and hugged him, others looked at his new leg with fear: they did not know how to react. One boy asked, "But you do have a foot with fingers, right?" He thought it was an iron insert.

The trainer showed them some tricks, which he now demonstrates to us: he twists the prosthesis so that the sole of the sneaker is on top. He puts a water bottle on it and proceeds to smile.

"I can't do everything as well as I used to, some of the supports (trainer's belts - ed.) don't work, so I'm looking for ways to overcome this. I break the exercise into several small ones and work through them in this way. There is nothing that a person cannot do if they want to," Yuriy reflects.

"I have been working for six months now, and the man who was wounded with me is still on a walker. He’s practically on all fours. And I have recovered, I live on," he smiles.

Appreciate the good, ignore the bad 

The coach is absolutely self-sufficient in his life and work.

"I have always been active, all my days are full of activities. It's the same now: in the morning, whether I want to or not, I make a lap around the city. Many people offer me a ride, but I walk. I drink coffee in my favorite place, and you can tell the time by me. 

I talk to my friends. I do the shopping, prepare lunch, and in the afternoon I'm at the gym with the kids until late in the evening. And on weekends I go out with friends to the countryside. I meditate while fishing. I can do everything on my own, recently I traveled eight hours in a bus and it was okay. I won't do any repairs, but I'll pay a specialist, some plumber. 

I do not think about the future. After being wounded, I began to appreciate the moments, to accept them, to enjoy them. I feel more happy. I appreciate the good people around me and pay attention to the good things."

He talks about his sister Liliya, who quit her job to take care of him at first. About his daughter, with whom he has a close relationship and who comes to his gym. He trains her, and he is proud of how she does flips and bridges. About people's reactions, which vary from pointing fingers and wailing grandmothers to help and respect.

"I don't pay attention to judgment and bad things. I notice the good: how attentive and patient the waiters in Lviv are when I take my card out of my pocket for a long time to pay. How taxi drivers will never raise a surprised eyebrow when they see a person unfastening a prosthesis to sit more comfortably. It touches me when glasses are fitted free of charge in an optical store, while taxi drivers may refuse to take money. I don't expect such pleasantries from everyone, they are rather pleasant bonuses."

A teenager in a black T-shirt runs past the coach. It's Oleh, his student.

"He is my frontrunner, he is preparing for the Ukrainian championship," the proud coach says.

He heads toward the horizontal bar, where the boy is doing the butterfly. Straight as a pencil, Oleh's figure soars above the bar, flips over in the air, and lands. As for me, everything looks perfect. But Yuriy is not satisfied. He raises his hands, showing how to hold them, and throws sports terms at the lad. A regular lesson has begun.

This article was created with the support of the Russian Language News Exchange.