Ukrainian Soldier Survives 200 Days on Frontline After Amputating His Own Leg

Ukrainian infantryman Kostiantyn Vlasenko amputated his own leg after spending more than 200 days alone on the front line, before becoming the first soldier in warfare to be evacuated by an aerial drone.

Vlasenko endured 491 days in the kill zone. For the first eight months, he and a fellow soldier known as “Baski” concealed themselves inside a cramped concrete pipeline while swarms of Russian drones blocked repeated rescue attempts.

When the pipe flooded during last winter, the pair were forced to leave and took shelter in an abandoned school. Baski was later killed there on his 50th birthday.

Russian forces eventually sent a loudspeaker message urging Vlasenko to surrender. The 49-year-old answered with the famous defiance associated with the defenders of Snake Island: “Russian warship, go f*** yourself!”

Unable to walk because of blast injuries, he crawled inside a cast-iron furnace to shield himself from enemy drones. He remained hidden there for another eight months.

His commanders used drones to send food and medical supplies. One delivery also carried a parcel from his wife, Tetyana, including a copy of Stephen King’s novel The Outsider.

Severe frostbite caused his left foot to decay and eventually fall away. When his right leg began “dangling,” Vlasenko rested it on a brick and used a knife to cut through the remaining tissue.

“Tears were flowing, but I had to cut,” he said.

With enemy drones surrounding his position and mines covering the terrain in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, commanders decided to attempt what they described as the world’s first aerial drone evacuation.

They dropped a phone near his position containing a video demonstration of how to secure himself beneath the drone. Written instructions were also provided in both Ukrainian and Russian.

A heavily modified bomber drone then swept in. After fastening himself to it, Vlasenko signalled to the camera with a heart shape and a thumbs-up.

The drone climbed 120 metres and flew 18 kilometres from Petropavlivka to safety, escorted by three Vampire drones. Russian forces captured one of the escort aircraft.

Recalling the rescue after 491 days at the front, Vlasenko said: “I have no words… A wonder. It is a miracle.”

Now recovering in hospital, Vlasenko—known by the callsign “Kostya”—told Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov how the remarkable evacuation unfolded. He wore a Gurzuf Defense cap, referencing the company that built the drone used in his rescue.

Vlasenko is from Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Before the full-scale war began, he worked as a truck driver at a quarry.

He drove to a recruitment office and insisted on being enlisted. He later served with the 2nd Battalion of Ukraine’s 30th Mechanised Brigade.

Vlasenko had been ordered to evacuate a wounded comrade before taking over the soldier’s position inside a concrete drainage pipe in the Kharkiv region.

The soldier had stepped on a petal mine and lost their toes and one foot while leaving the pipe to collect supplies on June 2 last year.

After evacuating them that day, Vlasenko took over with one ‘brother-in-arms’, callsign ‘Baski’.

In the middle of the pipe, a hole had been crafted down into an underground shelter. They would take it in turns to hide in the ‘shelter’ while the other kept watch in the pipe above.

They should have been rotated after two months, but Russia sent so many Mavic surveillance drones it was impossible to leave.

‘They had so many Mavics, the sky was dirty,’ he said. ‘If you didn’t see it, it saw you.’

An attempt to relieve them failed.

‘They tried to replace us once, but they didn’t make it,’ he said.

‘Later, other brothers-in-arms went out just to retrieve their bodies, but they couldn’t make it either. They couldn’t recover them.

‘So I said there was no need to come for me. Better that I die alone than more people die.’

After eight months in the pipe, it was flooded on February 14 this year which forced Vlasenko and Baski to abandon their shelter.

‘We crawled out and were already soaked as we moved,’ he said. ‘And, by the way, a hard frost set in again then.

‘Baski and I were walking together. But I had no strength left. We were already so weak.’

The pair reached a ruined school undetected by drones and radioed their location. Ukrainian drones dropped dry clothes, but Russian reconnaissance aircraft spotted the deliveries.

‘Then they started dropping munitions,’ Vlasenko said.

‘I was hit in the leg, but my feet were so frostbitten that I didn’t even feel anything strike me. Basically, my left leg was shattered. I could still stand on my right.

‘Then our guys flew in and dropped food, and I twisted my right leg while going to collect it. After that, I couldn’t really move normally at all.’

Desperate from hunger, Baski climbed out to collect the food. But an enemy drone flew in and hit him.

Vlasenko got to him, but with no torch could not make out his injuries in the dark. All night he could hear his comrade’s groans, but was unable to help.

‘He was just moaning: ‘Oh… ay…’ He couldn’t really say anything. I asked, ‘Where did it hit you? In the leg? In the arm? Where did it hit?’

‘Just moans and groans. I pulled him closer to me, as best I could. Then he went quiet.

‘By morning, my brother-in-arms had died. I couldn’t save him. He died on his 50th birthday.

‘He never got to celebrate it. God gave him a gift and took him. I was left alone on February 16. When it began to get light, I covered him up.’

Vlasenko realised his position was compromised, so stood on his twisted leg, grabbed his rifle and any supplies he could carry and went to move out.

As he did so, he heard an explosion nearby.

‘It turned out they were warning me,’ he said. ‘Later, they dropped a speaker, or some kind of gramophone, playing a recording telling me to surrender.’

The speaker told him: ‘Brother, we know you’re here. Believe me, your comrades won’t save you.

‘You heard the explosion. The next one could be aimed at you. We don’t want to kill you.

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‘Put a can or a bottle on the windowsill, and we’ll know you’re ready. A white light will guide you [referring to a drone]. Then captivity, the exchange pool, and home. Yes, exactly—home.’

But Vlasenko did not hesitate. He shouted: ‘Russian warship, go f*** yourself!’

‘It’s a pity they couldn’t hear me,’ he joked. ‘It couldn’t have had a microphone.’

He radioed it into his commanders who sent in drones to destroy the speaker, but they were unable to locate it.

‘Twenty minutes later, their big drone flew in,’ Vlasenko said, referring to a Russian bomber.

He curled up on his side, clenched his teeth, and waited for it to drop its munition.

‘Then came the explosion,’ he said. ‘What an explosion… I thought I was dead, but I could feel grit between my teeth.

‘It was dark. I opened my eyes, and it was still dark. I wondered whether I could still see. But the fact that I could feel grit in my teeth meant I was alive.

‘And that damned speaker kept playing…’

Vlasenko managed to crawl inside a cast-iron furnace he spotted amid the ruins.

‘There was a little opening… I don’t know what angel pushed me in there,’ he said.

Then, seconds later, the drone dropped a second enormous munition.

‘Everything started collapsing onto me,’ he said. ‘That was it. I thought I was… But I felt the same thing again: grit in my teeth. So I was alive.’

This is where he stayed for the next eight months. His comrades would send food and medicine by drone into the school’s ruins, he would climb out of the stove, collect it, then climb back in.

He would still continue combat surveillance, reporting back what he could see and hear of enemy movements.

While lying there, he noticed how the human body ‘pushes foreign objects out by itself’.

‘Pieces of shrapnel started falling out of me,’ he said.

By April, though, he said his left foot ‘died’. A combination of frostbite and lack of circulation saw it rot and drop off.

The next month his right leg, which he had twisted, went completely numb and started ‘dangling’.

‘The lower part of the leg was just hanging there,’ he said. ‘The more often I crawled out to collect supplies, the more it pulled on the bone. The skin was peeling away.

‘I realised I had to cut it off. Otherwise, it would reach the knee, and I would still be dragging it behind me.

‘So I made the decision to cut it off. I knew it couldn’t be saved anymore. I had wanted to keep at least one foot. But it didn’t work out, so it didn’t work out.’

Describing cutting it off, he said: ‘I put it on a brick and took a knife. Tears were flowing, but I had to cut. So I cut.

‘The left one—the wounded one—had already rotted off on its own.’

As the weather began to warm he remembers seeing hundreds of big orange and black butterflies flying where his severed legs lay.

For months, the only company he had was the radio as other positions phoned in ‘450’ – meaning ‘all quiet’.

‘When I heard the men at other observation posts reporting ‘450, 450’—I thought, ‘I’m still with someone…

‘And that was it. Silence again… I waited every hour for a report. It was happiness for me to know I wasn’t alone, to hear someone.

‘I went wild during that time… It was very lonely.’

But his men did not abandon him, sending him chocolates, sweets, tea, and cigarettes.

‘They spoiled me, so to speak, so I would at least have a little joy, something to distract me,’ he said.

‘My wife sent a parcel. They packed it up and dropped it to me. What my wife sent was a Stephen King book: The Outsider.’

It surprised Vlasenko, who said he didn’t realise his wife had noticed what a huge Stephen King fan he is.

He survived those days thinking of his daughter, Khrystyna.

‘I hadn’t given my daughter enough attention,’ he said. ‘Maybe it was the feeling that I wanted to change something. A thirst for life…

‘But I had also already decided I was dead.’

Then, around a month ago, his comrade Sergeant Lysyi radioed and said: ‘It’s being planned. Everything is practically ready. There are just a few finishing touches.’

Vlasenko said: ‘I thought perhaps they would come in a vehicle, or someone would arrive on a quad bike, or something else.

‘I didn’t know it would be by air.’

His commander said they would drop instructions, which confused him. ‘Don’t I know how to crawl out of a hole, damn it?’ he joked.

Then he received the instructions and the phone with a video telling him what to do and he understood.

He was hoisted into the air where he feared being dropped into a river as he can’t swim. As he was flown to safety he spotted a Ukrainian drone going the other way with supplies for troops.

‘That was something too: seeing it fly past,’ he said.

On his rescue, he added: ‘I have no words. I want to thank everyone. Everyone who did so much for this.

‘I don’t even know all of them, but I want to give them a piece of myself. I am so very grateful to them.’

Despite his extraordinary survival, Vlasenko is uncomfortable with his newfound place in history as the first ever soldier evacuated by aerial drone.

‘I don’t like being first,’ he said. ‘I prefer being second.’

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