A Ukrainian infantryman cut off his own leg to survive alone on the front line for over 200 days before becoming the first soldier to be evacuated by aerial drone in the history of warfare.
Kostiantyn Vlasenko endured 491 days in the killzone, first hiding in a cramped concrete pipeline with comrade ‘Baski’ as swarms of Russian drones prevented their rescue.
They were forced out after eight months when the pipe flooded last winter and hid in an abandoned school before Baski was killed on his 50th birthday.
Russia sent in a speaker telling him to surrender but the 49-year-old infantryman responded with the defiant phrase from the defenders of Snake Island: ‘Russian warship, go f*** yourself!’
Unable to walk from the blast wounds, he crawled inside a cast-iron furnace to protect himself from drones and remained there for a further eight months.
Commanders sent him medical supplies and food by drone and delivered a package from his wife, Tetyana, which included a Stephen King novel, The Outsider.
Severely frostbitten, his left foot rotted and fell off, before his right leg started ‘dangling’ so he placed it on a brick and cut through the remaining tissue with a knife.
‘Tears were flowing, but I had to cut,’ he said.
Kostiantyn Vlasenko cut off his own leg to survive alone on the front line for over 200 days before becoming the first soldier to be evacuated by aerial drone in the history of warfare
A fleet of Ukrainian drones flanked the craft on all sides to protect the wounded soldier
Clinging to a harness on the drone’s underbelly, the 80kg soldier was lifted into the sky
Surrounded on all sides by enemy drones, in heavily mined terrain in Kharkiv region, eastern Ukraine, his commanders decided to attempt the world’s first ever aerial drone evacuation.
They dropped a phone to his position with a video instructing him on how to tie himself to the underside of a drone, as well as written instructions in Ukrainian and Russian.
A heavily modified bomber drone then swooped in and, after attaching himself, Vlasenko made a heart sign and a thumbs up to its camera.
It rose 120 metres in the air and flew 18km from Petropavlivka to safety, escorted by a fleet of three Vampire drones, one of which was taken by the Russians.
Describing the rescue after 491 days on the front line, Vlasenko said: ‘I have no words… A wonder. It is a miracle.’
Now recovering in hospital, Vlasenko, callsign ‘Kostya’, revealed the extraordinary story behind the evacuation to Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov while wearing a Gurzuf Defense cap – a nod to the company which made the drone that rescued him.
Hailing from Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, Vlasenko was working as a truck driver at a quarry when war broke out.
He drove to the draft office and demanded to be signed up after which he served with the 2nd Battalion of Ukraine’s 30th Mechanised Brigade.
Vlasenko was ordered to evacuate an injured comrade and take over from them at a position in a concrete drainage pipe in 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.’
The Heavy Shot drone used on the mission was manufactured by Gurzuf Defence
Kostya was successfully transported to the evacuation point and is currently being treated
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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.
‘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.’
READ MORE: Ukraine carries out first ever aerial drone evacuation of a wounded soldier from the frontline
