KYIV, Jan 22 (Reuters) – Ukrainian soldier Andrii Onopriienko ran into a challenge when he took up his new hobby of acting: having to learn his lines just by listening to them.
The 31-year-old lost both eyes when two Russian anti-tank rounds ripped into his position in the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka in 2023.
He memorised his part nonetheless. Like the other veterans in his Kyiv-based group of around 15 actors, Onopriienko has found healing and fulfilment on stage, after a friend told him of a theatre looking for injured veterans and suggested he join. He reluctantly agreed to take part.
“Yes, we might not have an arm, or legs, or eyes – but we aren’t giving up,” he said.
Russia’s war, now entering its fifth year, has left countless Ukrainian soldiers wounded, with tens of thousands suffering one or more amputations.
Some of those with life-altering injuries struggle to reintegrate into a society itself navigating how to absorb a generation of maimed men and women.
Coping methods vary. For Onopriienko and his fellow troops-turned-thespians, none of whom had ever acted before, it meant taking to the stage.
Reuters followed the group, called Veterans’ Theatre, as they prepared for an avant-garde performance of an 18th-century Ukrainian parody of Virgil’s Aeneid.
“It’s rehabilitation and socialisation,” said Onopriienko. “It’s…positive emotions.”
SEEKING MEANING IN SOMETHING NEW
Russia’s war has left deep scars across wide swathes of Ukraine and its population, with no end in sight despite a U.S.-backed peace push.
Yehor Babenko, 27, was wounded in the first year of fighting when Russian forces struck his base in the southern region of Mykolaiv.
His face deformed by severe burns, he speaks by regulating a tube in his throat with one of two mangled hands that are missing all of their fingers.
That did not stop him from committing to months of taxing rehearsals full of dancing, twirling and tumbling.
Babenko, who began working as a veterans’ psychologist last year, said the transformative trauma of serious injury often compels people to seek meaning in something new.
“I know a lot of cases where people opened up or tried things they never dared to try,” he said.
For 57-year-old Roman Trokhymenko, who lost his right leg in 2024, participating in the theatre has helped reinforce the confidence he has tried hard to maintain since his injury.
The director, Olha Semyoshkina, told Reuters she had individually tailored the roles, which were heavily based around physical movement, to suit each veteran’s injury.
“LIKE YOU’RE STANDING THERE NAKED”
Performing on stage poses not only physical challenges, the actors said.
Babenko, for instance, said it was difficult adjusting to a creative field which encourages free thought after spending years in the rigid order of the military.
Taras Kozub, 53, lost his left arm after storming an enemy position on the southeastern front. Today, the folk music aficionado plays a hurdy-gurdy with a specially designed prosthetic appendage that attaches directly to the instrument.
Even Kozub concedes the adjustment to theatre was challenging, and not a remedy for every veteran.
“The first thing I realised is that you can’t fool anyone while onstage,” he said. “It’s like you’re standing there naked.”
During the premiere in Kyiv, the veterans stomped and shuffled across the stage under bright neon lights, and to live musical accompaniment by Kozub and others.
They received a boisterous ovation from members of the audience, some of whom cried or embraced.
Babenko says it was critical for his fellow comrades to understand that life does not simply end after a serious injury.
“Sometimes, you understand it’s the opposite – that it just starts getting going.”
(Writing by Dan Peleschuk; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
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