"I'll be able to talk to you for 40 minutes, long enough to get away from the front line." On August 15, night had fallen in the Donbas. Dmytro Melnyk started his car and put his cell phone on a loudspeaker. The infantry platoon commander was leaving his position at Chasiv Yar, where the Ukrainian army had been waging a fierce battle against the Russians for months. As he traversed the back roads of eastern Ukraine, behind him, in his khaki bag, rattled a volleyball, his training ball.
Along with another soldier, Yevhenii Korinets, Melnyk is one of 12 Ukrainian sitting volleyball athletes preparing to compete at the Paris Paralympic Games. Among the 140 athletes from Kyiv, they are the only two combatants in the Ukrainian army.
He passed a checkpoint. "Can you hear the ambulance? There's a wounded guy in it, and I'm off to play volleyball." The 45-year-old former restaurateur finds it hard to reconcile his two worlds. "I felt uncomfortable admitting to the 30 members of my platoon why I was leaving for Paris." He suffered a fall at the age of 18. His left leg was 8 centimeters shorter than the right. He then took up sitting volleyball and, in 2008, set up the NGO Equal Opportunities to help disabled people integrate into society. With the war in the Donbas breaking out in 2014, his work took on another dimension: "We helped several Ukrainian veterans after they returned from the front."
When Russia invaded in 2022, Melnyk believed it was his turn to don the uniform, but he was turned away from the recruitment center in his hometown of Dnipro twice because of his disability. "The third time, we had to cheat during the interview to get into the army," said the commander. Ironically, his left leg was hit by a Russian shell in August 2023. He had to pick himself up again and again.
In Paris, his second Games after Rio in 2016, he will of course be thinking of his pobratymy ("brothers in arms" in Ukrainian), his wife and two daughters aged 13 and 18: "Since 2022, the Ukrainian flag has become an icon for me. I have a duty to outdo myself, for my loved ones and for my country."
On August 15, in his apartment in downtown Zhytomyr, 850 kilometers west of Chasiv Yar, Korinets was also packing for Paris. In his wardrobe, among the blue and yellow sportswear, the 27-year-old volleyball player had carefully arranged his military uniform, a souvenir of his former life as an army orderly. However, the first job for this native of Sevastopol, in what is now Russian-annexed Crimea, was as a physiotherapist for handicapped children. He was only able to flourish in this profession for two short years, until February 24, 2022. "Zhytomyr is not far from the border with Belarus, so we had to act fast." The young physiotherapist then rushed to the recruitment center: "The men wanted to take up arms, there were a lot of people."
You have 34.77% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.