LVIV, UKRAINE — The wind howls through the streets of this western Ukrainian city on a cool June afternoon, the sound of robust laughter spills from a locker room at a local sports complex. Players emerge in their soccer uniforms and begin training, warming up by passing the ball around and using their elbow crutches to move in rhythm like natural extensions of their bodies.
Each man is an amputee, among the roughly 100,000 people in Ukraine who have lost limbs, their bodies forever marked by Russia’s full-scale invasion more than three years ago.
One player in particular stands out: He’s 32-year-old Deivis, a broad shouldered, tall, light brown-skinned man. He’s not from Ukraine. He doesn’t speak Ukrainian. He’s Colombian. A volunteer soldier, far from his family in South America. But on the soccer field, he speaks the universal language of the sport so beloved back home.
“I use a translator in between the words I sort of learn," says Deivis in Spanish as he stretches on the field. He asked that his last name be withheld to protect his family. “They’re good guys, good players. Family. I’m grateful for this team.”
The team, Pokrova, is part of the “League of the Mighty,” created by the Ukrainian Association of Football last year to promote amputee soccer and provide a community for those living with the lasting effects of war.
Before coming to Ukraine, Deivis served over a decade in the Colombian military, deployed deep in the jungles of Cauca to fight criminals, guerrilla groups and paramilitaries.
Colombia’s history of violence, economic turmoil and its lack of opportunities have led many, like Deivis, to migrate and others to take up arms abroad, putting their lives at even higher risk on the front lines in Ukraine, fighting against an enemy that isn’t their own.
"You come for the money because that’s the truth, but you also come to help. You have to defend the territory wherever you are.”Deivis, a 32-year-old Colombian soldier in Ukraine.
On Feb. 24, 2022, Russia began bombing cities across Ukraine, igniting its full-scale war, the largest in Europe since World War II. Ukraine, facing one of the largest armies in the world, needed to act fast and recruit fighters, creating a unit to enlist volunteer soldiers, the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine.
The number of volunteer fighters, their nationalities as well as casualty figures, are difficult to verify. The Ukrainian government does not publicly release this information due to security concerns, making precise data hard to report. But foreign fighters are here from Colombia and other nations.
'I like war'
“I like war, if you know what I mean. It has been that way since I was a child, and as a Colombian it’s like this,” he says, referring to the country’s internal war, the longest-running in the world which has affected nearly every Colombian in some way.
“Growing up in the mountains, I saw a lot of soldiers and I really liked seeing the army. I wanted to be a soldier because this is something that calls you. I decided to be a soldier.”
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But years of service wore him down and left him disillusioned.
“To be out there in the forest looking for bandits, and you catch them and they’re released,” he says, “what you’re doing is wasting your time.”
Disillusionment wasn’t the only reason he left. There was also economics. One of seven children from Colombia’s Caribbean coast, Deivis was determined to help his parents and ease the family’s financial burden.
Military pensions for retired soldiers in Colombia are low, only slightly above the country’s monthly minimum wage of roughly $425. Active-duty soldiers earn around $750 a month.
Meanwhile, foreign volunteers in Ukraine’s International Legion can make up to $3,300 monthly, depending on their time spent on the front lines, according to several soldiers interviewed for this story.
For many Colombians, traveling overseas to fight in Ukraine represents the chance to earn almost four times what they could back home. The financial aspect for many former Colombian soldiers, including Deivis, was hard to pass up.
“I also like wearing the uniform and defending. You come for the money because that’s the truth, but you also come to help,” he says, another reason for signing up to fight in Ukraine. “When you are on the front lines and your life is at risk, money doesn’t matter. You have to defend the territory wherever you are.”
The differences are stark, he says, between Colombia’s armed conflict and Ukraine’s war in Europe as they fight Russia.
“Here there are deaths every day, wounded people… 90% of the time when you’re working, you lose your life,” he said.
In an interview in Kyiv at the end of June, Lauren Guillaume, Director of the MIA-KIA (Missing In Action / Killed In Action) program for The R.T Weatherman Foundation, said the cases of Colombians had “skyrocketed” in recent months. Among the many crucial roles the foundation plays, Guillaume and her team are tasked with “working with the families of the missing in action and killed in action,” ensuring they’re returned home.
“Right now we are actually speaking with another unit who asked us for help to collect DNA for about 12 Colombian MIAs,” she says.
“The purpose of our team, our legal aid team, and warfare victim identification team is to be a trusted representative for these families and to help them go through this process, to help them understand a very Ukrainian system with Ukrainian laws and a Ukrainian judicial system for foreign families.”
Deivis lost four fellow Colombians on the front lines. He credits his life to his experiences as a soldier.
“Without the experiences I wouldn’t have survived. It’s tough here.” For him, leaving the battlefield alive came at a cost: he lost his left leg.
'Drones caught us'
Two years after the full-scale war started, on Feb. 20, 2024, Deivis became a volunteer fighter. Just six months after arriving, he was deployed to the Kharkiv region in eastern Ukraine, joining several assault battalions in a joint counteroffensive mission.
The first team went in, but their reconnaissance vehicle was quickly blown up, sending the second team of four, Deivis’ unit, as backup.
At four in the morning, his unit was then ordered to advance.
“The drones caught us and screwed up the first two,” Deivis says, referring to two of his teammates being severely wounded.
“I was behind a house and the drone threw a grenade, so it knocked me down,” he recounts.
“When the drone drops a grenade, you hear the fuse, 'PLA! ' So you yell ‘grenade!’ and you throw yourself to the ground. My comrade didn’t say anything and that thing exploded throwing me over there. I went crazy and started running,” he says, pointing in the distance to where the blast sent him flying.
In the chaos, he dropped his rifle as he ran and after about 20 yards, realized what he’d left behind and turned back to retrieve it. He and the other soldier quickly jumped into a nearby bunker, barely big enough for the two of them.
“I waited four days with that tourniquet on. It’s some really tough stuff. Those Russians had us trapped. They wouldn't let us out.”Deivis recalls the incident that led to the amputation of his leg.
“They told us the Russians weren’t going to attack, so we left. We found one of the injured guys and they ordered us to take him out,” Deivis says.
Heading fast toward a larger bunker to take cover was when he stepped on a landmine.
“Running to take out my partner was how I stepped on the mine… I kept running and running because I knew I couldn’t stay there. It was on a street, so I ran like that, with just one foot, supporting myself on my heel,” he says.
Once inside the second bunker, he placed a tourniquet on his injured leg. Alongside the other guys, they were stranded, forced to wait out the intense Russian bombardments.
“I waited four days with that tourniquet on. It’s some really tough stuff. Those Russians had us trapped, just pure drones and grenades. They wouldn't let us out.”
Days later, they decided to leave the bunker. Running furiously in zig zag patterns, Deivis says he covered about a kilometer, hopping on one leg as fast as he could.
“I grabbed the flak jacket of a Brazilian colleague from behind and we just ran and ran. Then I got to a point where everyone was passing me and I was left behind. But thank God, another friend came back for me.”
Deivis shows a picture of his injured foot on his cellphone, the winter boot torn open, the flesh and bone exposed. After days without proper medical care while the Russian fire relentlessly pounded their position, what might have been a treatable wound with reconstructive surgery ultimately turned into a life-altering amputation.
Deivis then scrolls to a chaotic video as men run for cover from drones. Men, seemingly out of breath, can be heard cursing and screaming in Spanish, “COME ON, COME ON! GO, GO, GO!” Deivis points at the screen to an area he says is where he stepped on the landmine.
“Oh man, I feel such adrenaline. It gives me anxiety,” he says when asked how watching that video makes him feel.
Close to death
Despite the long rehabilitation and coming close to death, Deivis hopes to return to duty with Ukraine’s International Legion. He signed a three-year contract and wants to complete it. Even as an amputee, he’s willing to take on other roles available for wounded soldiers, like administrative work.
The salary he earned on the front lines allowed him to build a home for his mother, a thought that brings a smile to his face.
Back in Lviv, far from home and front line trenches, the soccer team Pokrova has become an anchor for Deivis, offering him a sense of belonging, a community built on shared experience and resilience. It has also aided in his physical rehabilitation.
To the left of the field, children's laughter rings out as they shoot into goalposts, roll in the grass and play freely. To the right, shouts of men fill the windy air as they prepare for their next practice drill. The two sides offer a grim reminder of the men who risked their lives on the battlefield now adapting to life as amputees. Their sacrifices made so that the next generation, these young kids, might grow up in a safe and democratic country.
The sounds on the field replace the echoes of artillery and shelling. It was on the soccer field in his barrio where Deivis once played defense as a boy, and on the battlefield where he also defended. The game now carries him beyond pain and death, across distance and towards a sense of home he has found far from Colombia.
This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines Initiative in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.
Nastassia Kantorowicz Torres and Dzvinka Pinchuk contributed to this report.
