An almost unbelievable story of survival from the war in Ukraine has come to light, featuring a 49-year-old soldier who spent 491 consecutive days in one of the most dangerous areas of the front lines and was forced to amputate one of his own legs, in order to stay alive.
Kostyantyn Vlasenko, who served in the Ukrainian Army’s 30th Mechanized Brigade, was eventually rescued with the help of a specially modified drone, in an operation that Ukrainian forces describe as the first airlift of a wounded soldier directly from a combat position using an unmanned aerial vehicle.
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
His harrowing ordeal, as reported by the British Daily Mail, is based on the account he gave to Ukrainian journalist Yuri Butusov.
For months, Vlasenko lived literally under the Russians’ noses, in an area riddled with landmines and enemy drones. He hid in makeshift shelters, received food and medicine by air, monitored the movements of opposing forces, and communicated with his commanders via radio. At one point, when he was completely alone, he began to believe that he would never make it out of there alive.
Yesterday, we all saw the video of Kostiantyn Vlasenko, a Ukrainian Defender from the 30th Brigade, being evacuated by drone from a position on the left bank of the Oskil River in the Kupiansk sector, Kharkiv region. I was deeply impacted by the video and his interview. After being seriously wounded in February, Kostiantyn lost one leg. Several months later, when gangrene set in, he had to amputate his other leg himself. Throughout all of this, he continued to hold the position alone. Several attempts to evacuate him by land had failed, so different units of Ukraine’s Defense Forces came together to rescue Kostiantyn. I’m speechless.
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) October 20, 2026
The pipe that became his home for months
Before the war, Vlasenko worked as a truck driver at a quarry in Kryvyi Rih, the birthplace of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. When the Russian invasion began, he decided to enlist in the army. He eventually found himself serving in the second battalion of the 30th Mechanized Brigade.
On June 2, 2025, he took over for an injured soldier at a forward position in the Kharkiv region. His predecessor had stepped on a landmine and lost part of his leg while attempting to pick up supplies. Together with a fellow soldier, known by the call sign “Baski,” they took up position inside a narrow concrete drainage pipe. Inside, they had cut a hole leading to an underground shelter.
The two men took turns on sentry duty, with one monitoring the area and the other resting underground. Initially, they were supposed to be relieved after two months. But the area had become swamped with Russian reconnaissance drones, making any movement nearly impossible. “There were so many Mavics that the sky was ‘darkened’ by them. If you didn’t see the drone, it saw you,” he recalls.
An attempt to dislodge them failed, with the soldiers who tried to approach the position being killed. Even missions to recover the bodies proved fruitless. That’s when Vlasenko asked his superiors not to send any more men. “I told them they didn’t need to come for me. I’d rather die alone than have more people get killed.”
491 days alone on the frontline. He amputated his own leg with a knife to survive. And when all hope seemed lost, a drone came to bring him home. This is the extraordinary story of Ukrainian soldier Kostiantyn Vlasenko. Imagine a concrete drainage pipe in almost-occupied territory. Two soldiers inside. Then there is only one left. Without legs. With no hope that anyone will come for him. And so it goes, month after month. Kostiantyn Vlasenko, from Kryvyi Rih, volunteered to fight. He had to beg for a long time just to be called up. He was assigned to a position known as “Vertun” — a concrete drainage pipe converted into a shelter. He and his comrade held it for months. Until one day, his comrade was killed — on his 50th birthday, February 16. Kostiantyn was left alone. The enemy knew he was there. They dropped a speaker playing a recording telling him to surrender. His own side would never save him, they said. A white drone would come for him and take him home. Kostiantyn answered over the radio: “russian warship, go fuck yourself.” And stayed at his position. Then came the explosive drops from enemy drones. His left leg was badly injured, and he twisted his right. His legs began to die. The flesh on his left foot rotted away on its own. He amputated his right foot himself — with a knife, resting it on a brick. “Tears were running down my face. It had to be cut off. So I cut it off,” he recalled. Later, he joked to his commander: “Congratulate me — I no longer have flat feet or size 44 shoes.” When the weather warmed up, he crawled to where his legs had been left behind. There, he saw orange-and-black butterflies swarming around them. “I thought: God, butterflies have come out of my legs, too.” It sounds like something out of a Stephen King novel. And that is no metaphor. His wife had sent him King’s The Outsider in a care package. The book helped keep him going, along with thoughts of his daughter, Khrystyna. Then came the rescue. A drone flew in to bring Kostiantyn home alive. The pilot dropped instructions. The drone landed and shut down its engines. Kostiantyn clipped himself on with a carabiner, gave the camera an OK sign and a heart, and took off. As they flew over a river, he feared only one thing: that they would be shot down and he would fall into the water. He couldn’t swim. Other drones provided cover. The enemy shot one of them down. But Kostiantyn made it. 491 days at his position. Both legs lost. A drone sent to bring him home alive. And a man who still doesn’t consider himself a hero. He says: “I don’t like being first. I’d rather be second.” He is alive. He is back on solid ground. His heroism and his story will live on forever.
— UAVoyager(@CrimeanVoyager) October 20, 2026
The Death of His Comrade on His 50th Birthday
On February 14, 2026, after about eight months in the pipeline, the shelter flooded. The two soldiers were forced to abandon their position in the bitter cold. Exhausted, they managed to reach an abandoned school, where they radioed their commanders. Ukrainian drones dropped dry clothes and supplies, but the deliveries were spotted by Russian reconnaissance aircraft.
Intense attacks followed. Vlasenko was seriously wounded in his left leg. Because his limbs had already suffered extensive frostbite, he didn’t even feel the blow at first. Shortly afterward, he was also injured in his right leg while trying to retrieve food.
Baski, driven to desperation by hunger, attempted to leave the shelter to gather supplies when a Russian drone struck him. Vlasenko crawled toward him, but in the darkness he couldn’t make out his injuries. “All night long I heard him moaning. I asked him where he’d been hit—in the arm or the leg—but he couldn’t answer. I pulled him as close to me as I could. Then he fell silent.” The next morning, his comrade was dead.
Knowing that the Russians had pinpointed his location, the wounded soldier tried to move, using the only leg he could still stand on. Then he heard an explosion. Shortly afterward, a Russian drone dropped a loudspeaker into the area, from which a recorded message repeatedly played, urging him to surrender. “Brother, we know you’re here. Believe me, your comrades won’t save you,” the voice said.
The message warned him that the next explosion could kill him and promised him capture, a prisoner exchange, and a return home. They asked him to leave a bottle or a can on a windowsill as a sign that he accepted the terms of surrender. Vlasenko responded by shouting the famous phrase used by the Ukrainians defending Fidonisi against a Russian warship: “Too bad they couldn’t hear me,” he says today with a laugh. “The loudspeaker probably didn’t have a microphone.”
About 20 minutes later, a large Russian bomb-carrying drone appeared over the school. The first explosion was so powerful that Vlasenko thought he had been killed. “I opened my eyes and it was dark. I wondered if I could still see. But I could feel dirt between my teeth. That meant I was alive.” And the Russian loudspeaker kept playing the same message.
Amid the ruins of the school, the soldier spotted an old cast-iron stove with a small opening inside. With his last ounce of strength, he crawled inside. “I don’t know what angel pushed me there,” he recalls.
Seconds later, a second powerful explosion followed. Parts of the building collapsed around him, but the stove held firm and saved his life. He remained there for the next few months. His fellow fighters continued to send him food, water, and medicine via drones. Every time a delivery arrived, he would crawl out from behind the stove, gather whatever he could, and return to his makeshift shelter.
Despite his condition, he continued to brief his superiors on the movements of Russian forces. His injuries, however, were steadily worsening.
In April, as he describes, his left foot had suffered such severe damage from frostbite and poor blood circulation that the tissue became necrotic and eventually fell off. The following month, the condition worsened in his right leg as well. The lower part of his leg had lost all sensation and was hanging by the remaining tissue, making it even more difficult for him to move around. “I realized I had to cut it off. Otherwise, the damage would spread all the way to the knee, and I’d keep dragging it behind me,” he explains.
So he made a decision that seems unthinkable. He placed his injured leg on a brick, took a knife, and cut the tendons holding it in place by himself. “Tears were streaming down my face, but I had to cut it off. And I cut it off,” he says today in his harrowing account. He wanted, as he explains, to manage to save at least one of his legs, but it wasn’t possible.
When the weather began to warm up, he saw hundreds of large butterflies, with orange and black wings, flying around the spot where his severed limbs lay. That image has remained etched in his memory.
The Unprecedented Drone Rescue Operation
About a month before his rescue, a fellow combatant, a sergeant with the call sign “Lisi,” contacted him and informed him that an operation to extract him was being planned. Vlasenko thought they would send a vehicle or a four-wheeled motorcycle. He couldn’t imagine that a drone would come to lift him into the air.
His commanders dropped a cell phone containing an instructional video at his location, as well as written instructions in Ukrainian and Russian explaining how he was to secure himself beneath the unmanned aerial vehicle. The operation was carried out using a specially modified heavy drone from the Ukrainian company Gurzuf Defense, with the participation of various military units.
The aircraft approached its position, and Vlasenko managed to secure himself to the lifting mechanism. Before taking off, he formed a heart shape with his hands and gave a thumbs-up to the drone’s camera.
According to the Daily Mail’s account, the drone lifted him to a height of about 120 meters and carried him a distance of 18 kilometers, accompanied by other Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles.
During the flight, Vlasenko was worried he might fall into a river, as he cannot swim. He also recalls seeing a Ukrainian drone flying in the opposite direction, delivering supplies to soldiers who were still on the front lines.
The Ukrainian operation has been described by the units involved as a historic first in the use of aerial drones to evacuate the wounded from active combat positions.
Source: Proto Thema
