“Guys need positive rehabilitation”: how a veteran takes servicemen to Lourdes and runs marathons

“I drank a lot, got hooked on amphetamine, experienced unbearable panic attacks, rushed to doctors because I couldn't understand what was happening to me: I had a feeling that the very next moment I would either have an epileptic seizure or die from extreme nervous tension,” says Oleksandr Shvetsov, a Zhytomyr resident.

The same Sashko who has helped veterans with disabilities to scuba dive in tropical seas, travel to the geyser valley and participate in other enchanting projects.

hromadske talked to Oleksandr and found out how the man managed to reinvent himself and learned to reсover his fellow soldiers' taste for life.

“I cried and prayed”

“You're a cool guy who knows a hundred and one ways to make money, you're aт ardent party-goer who sparks ideas and lights up any company. And in 2014, you are mobilized to the ATO: Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk, Shchastia. Near Luhansk, you were wounded and lost your leg.

A wheelchair. Your friends look down at you embarrassedly, because they are not ready to accept you like this. And you are not ready either – your metal prosthesis has been hidden in the bathroom for a year. You cannot accept that this piece of metal is now a part of you. And you are only 29,” Oleksandr recalls.

But thanks to several turning points in his life, Sashko was able to pull himself together.

The Zhytomyr City Council allocated him an apartment as a disabled veteran. The guys he invited to do the repairs turned out to be former drug addicts who had completed a rehabilitation course at a Christian center.

“The guys saw how I was suffering from a hangover,” says Sashko. “And they invited me to their center. They prayed around me that God would help me get rid of my addictions. There was such an atmosphere there that I cried and sincerely asked God for deliverance. The rehabilitation course lasted 6 months, but I stayed only three days because my relatives were afraid that these people would take my apartment and the money I received from the state away from me.

In short, three days later I got out. It was the end of December, the air was frosty and fresh, and I breathed it in and felt that that was it, I would not drink, smoke, or use drugs anymore. I had tried to quit hundreds of times before, but I couldn't. And then I felt a sense of complete liberation,” the man says.

Later, on the advice of his friends, Sashko traveled to the French city of Lourdes, which has been famous for its supposedly miraculous springs for several centuries. He was still suffering from headaches and panic attacks.

“Servicemen from all over the world come there to pray for healing,” says Sashko. “I also bathed in the Lourdes water and prayed. I had a dream there: a monk was washing me with healing water and twirling the hair on my head. After sleeping, my terrible headaches disappeared, I had no panic attacks, and I felt good. And I wanted to bring other wounded and crippled veterans to Lourdes.”

Sashko's veteran projects began with this desire to share the miracle of healing.

“You stop being oppressed by your otherness”

At the time, Sashko had his own bus and was planning to start a passenger transportation business. He posted an ad on social media saying that he was gathering guys for a trip to Lourdes and was looking for someone to help with fuel and hotels along the way.

The sponsor was found in a few hours, and there were so many people willing to go that they had to order a large tourist bus. The project was named “Hero Bus”, and Sashko has long since lost count of the number of trips he has made, as well as his fellow soldiers he has shown the world.

Later, the Zhytomyr City Council, participants of the “Make a Comedian Laugh” show, and the band Okean Elzy joined in to support the project. Ordinary Ukrainians also made numerous donations to support Sashko's idea.

Veterans with amputations bathed in Lourdes took a ride on the Seine, saw the Gioconda in the Louvre, walked around Krakow and Prague, and dove in the Red Sea. Recently, another group returned from Iceland, where they saw geysers and volcanic craters for the first time in their lives.

Sashko wanted the veterans to learn how to live with prostheses and move around the city without shame.

“I've been living with a prosthesis for 8 years, it took me a long time to master it, and I want the guys to do it with my help as soon as possible,” says Sashko. “In Europe, it's easy: people there don't look down on a group of people in wheelchairs or with prostheses trying to climb stairs or get on a boat. And you stop being oppressed by your otherness. I am sure that the guys need exactly this kind of rehabilitation – based on positive emotions, which encourages activity.”

“I thought I would die”

In search of positive emotions, Sashko himself even climbed Hoverla on a prosthesis.

“It was summer, I was dressed in shorts, and it was raining and snowing at the top! It was cold, everything limped and it was slippery. I was the only one in the group with a disability, so the guys helped me. It was very hard physically. Going down the slippery slopes was crazy. I thought I would die. But now I'm thinking about Tibet - I'll definitely go someday,” says Sashko.

He also wants the boys to jump from a 90-meter tower with a cable or with a parachute from a height of 4 kilometers. Sashko himself has already jumped with a parachute – a few years ago in Odesa.

“I went to Poland and studied the situation. The instructor looked at my stump and told me that the guys shouldn't have a shorter one, otherwise, they would fall out of their equipment when the parachute opened. We will jump in a bundle with the instructor, like passengers. Each of us will have a camera on our wrists to film ourselves and publish motivational videos later,” says Sashko.

“I can't just sit around”

In the fall of 2022, the man decided to raise 800,000 hryvnias to buy pickup trucks and buses for the Armed Forces by walking 800,000 steps from Odesa to Yaremche, symbolically uniting the Black Sea coast and the Carpathians. Each hryvnia raised shortened the distance by one step.

“My surviving leg hurt a lot because it was carrying all the load,” says Sashko. “I had to walk all 800,000 steps, but I managed to walk up to 12,000 steps on average per day.”

Every day, he posted a video report on his walk on social media to spread the word about his campaign. He got so involved that when he had walked only 100 thousand steps, he had already raised more than UAH 7 million. He had neither the reason nor the physical strength to go on. With the money raised, he managed to buy cars for the Ukrainian Armed Forces and other things the military needed.

In May 2023, Sashko organized a marathon to raise funds for a gastroscope for the Main Military Clinical Hospital in Kyiv. He started from Zhytomyr, while his fellow soldier Serhii Khrapko, who lost an arm and a leg in the war, started from Kyiv. They walked toward each other: each step they took “cost” 22 hryvnias. The men managed to raise 3.5 million hryvnias for the hospital where they had been treated after being wounded.

“I receive a good pension and have other income, so I can stop working for the sake of earning money and help people. Now I need our victory for peace of mind, and we need to bring it closer,” says Sashko.

When “after the war” time comes

Before the war in Donbas, Shvetsov had neither the time nor the mood to get a special education. He worked as a salesman, and a sales agent, and traveled to Poland to work. After the ATO, he decided to serve in the police, but they demanded at least some kind of diploma.

His status as a combatant allowed Sashko to get a free education as an ecologist and public administrator, but it did not satisfy him. Now he is studying at the Faculty of National Security, Law, and International Relations at Zhytomyr Polytechnic University for his own money and pleasure.

“What will I do after the war? I don't know. Everything is always spontaneous for me. Now I think that after the victory I will want to do nothing. Go to Tibet. If I'm lucky enough to fall in love, then get married. I don't know if I will feel happy on the day of victory. Maybe I will have some other emotions,” theman says.