In Ukraine, Climbing Becomes Medicine for Wounded Soldiers
- Paul Boyer et Pierre Terraz
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
Every week, former soldiers who lost a leg or an arm on the front line come to a stylish climbing gym in Kyiv and work their way up routes. Since 2022, the war is believed to have caused nearly 120,000 amputations, according to some estimates. A report from Ukraine.
Under the stunned eyes of able-bodied climbers, Dima lowers proudly on an auto-belay, a device that catches and lowers a climber without a human belayer. It does not happen every day, but today the joy is all over his face: he has just finished his first route since the attack that changed his life. Once he unclips, he collapses onto a crash pad and throws both arms into the air.
A Giant on Steel Feet
Dima is 32. He lost both legs on April 1, 2024. Not in a motorcycle crash or from an autoimmune disease, but in a violent kamikaze drone strike — one of those TNT-packed aircraft that can fly up to 150 km/h, about 93 mph, and slam into a target by surprise before exploding.
His story is tragically similar to those of tens of thousands of Ukrainians since Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. On the front, these killer drones have become one of the main dangers for infantry on foot. According to official Ukrainian military data, casualties attributed to drones rose from less than 10 percent in 2022 to nearly 80 percent last year.
“That day, I had just been deployed to Pokrovsk, in the Donbas. Our mission was simple: neutralize an enemy position, then get back to the trench in our vehicle. On the way back, I remember our guys yelling at us over the walkie-talkies to speed up, then the sudden buzz of a drone, and then everything went black,” Dima says, sitting in his wheelchair.
The rest of the story was told to him later by the six men in his unit. Right after the strike, his teammates managed to get out of the burning vehicle unharmed. Dima was the only one badly wounded. Without thinking, they pulled him from his seat and saw that his legs were shredded. They rushed to put on four emergency tourniquets to stop the bleeding. It was not enough.
“I like it because I reconnect with my body. I’ve tried several sports since my amputation: skiing, wakeboarding, even kayaking. But climbing is the only one where I don’t want to quit”
Félix, a former Ukrainian soldier
Only after long minutes at a “stabilization point” — a kind of makeshift field hospital near the front line — did a doctor decide to transfer him to a surgical unit in the Dnipro metro area, in east-central Ukraine, where both of his legs were amputated to save his life.
After months of recovery, 69 surgeries, and just as many doubts, he now makes the trip to this Kyiv gym twice a week to get his head right.
“Before the war and my accident, sport was my whole life. I started weight training when I was 16. They called me Arnold Schwarzenegger,” he says, showing off a little as he knocks out pull-ups on a bar, hands dusted with chalk. For all his giant presence, the stuffed panda clipped to his prosthetic leg makes everyone smile.
Climbing with only his arms, which load up fast with lactic acid, increases the strain on his muscles by about 50 percent. “My extensors are stiff, and I get tired faster. The hardest thing is listening to my body and not pushing too hard. Another tricky part is learning how to manage where I put my weight. That’s where I’m going to improve this year,” the former soldier says.
Superhumans, Land Mines, and a Second Wind
Every week, six to eight participants, all amputees who have lost a leg or an arm, come to climb the gym’s walls. The classes, which have been running for nearly a year, are organized by Second Wind, a Ukrainian nonprofit that offers indoor and outdoor activities for veterans. Hikes in the Carpathians, mountaineering in Nepal, bouldering, roped climbing — the group keeps building inclusive projects around amputees.
On Friday, April 24, Vertige Media met several participants in Kyiv, including Dima. On one side of the ultramodern gym, able-bodied climbers work slab routes — low-angle climbs that demand balance and precision — and film themselves in the steep overhangs. On the other side, men wearing prosthetics aim for the tops of routes. More slowly, but with more determination.
As the music shifts between European-style electro and Ukrainian rap, Felix, another participant, adjusts the prosthetic on his injured leg. More introverted than Dima, the 29-year-old is still deeply marked by the accident that happened 11 months ago.
That morning, Felix had set out on a reconnaissance patrol in the village of Shcherbynivka. When he lit a cigarette, his foot brushed a land mine. His leg was blown apart. He blacked out immediately.
Leaning against one of the gym walls, he remembers that traumatic day. “They operated on me right away in a house on the front line. It was very hard. It was cold, and there wasn’t much equipment. I stayed less than a day before being transferred to the Superhumans Center in Lviv, where I started rehab,” he says, tears in his eyes.
It was in the halls of that state-of-the-art trauma center, largely funded by American foundations and located near the Polish border, that he first heard about Second Wind. As soon as his custom prosthetic was ready, he decided to move back to Kyiv and start climbing.
“I like it because I reconnect with my body. I’ve tried several sports since my amputation: skiing, wakeboarding, even kayaking. But climbing is the only one where I don’t want to quit,” Felix says as he puts on a harness.
“Come on, let’s move, man. Saddle up!” Alina Bielakova calls out, clipping a carabiner to his harness.
With care and energy, she gives Felix advice on where to place his prosthetic, how far to reach, and when to rest when she senses his confidence slipping. Placing an artificial foot well, without the sensation of touch and with distance hard to judge, is almost impossibly difficult.
So for nearly two hours, as she does every week, the 33-year-old climber throws herself fully into her role as coach. After starting her career in design, she discovered climbing in 2020 in a worn-out gym in Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine. Today, her hometown is constantly bombarded by the Russian army and lives to the rhythm of air-raid alerts. Climbing gave her a second breath.
“It was climbing or death. The first time, I was so happy that I told myself I wanted to do this for the rest of my life”
Alina, a climbing coach in Kyiv
“It was climbing or death. The first time, I was so happy that I told myself I wanted to do this for the rest of my life,” she says, smiling as she scrolls through photos of her first competitions on her iPhone.
Between Reels of French climber Oriane Bertone, there are clips of Alina tearing through boulders from Kyiv to Lviv, then Poland and Italy. Unlike men, who are no longer allowed to leave Ukraine because of the general mobilization, women can still travel abroad.
She improved quickly and stood out, reaching V7 in bouldering, or Font 7A+, and 5.13b in sport climbing, the U.S. equivalent of French 8a.
“In other countries, they’re ahead of us. Some climbers live from climbing. Here, you need another job on the side,” she says, determined.
To keep climbing as much as possible, she got hired at this Kyiv gym. Her contagious good mood quickly made her the obvious choice to coach these former soldiers.
“At first, I was nervous,” she says with a smile. “During the first classes, I was afraid I’d say the wrong thing. They all have different stories, different traumas. Look at Dima — he’s so strong. We had a good laugh when he was surprised that someone as small as me could climb such hard boulders. We became friends. These guys are family to me now.”
Sitting on the mat, her students listen closely as she talks. That kind of intimate openness is still fairly rare in Ukraine, so they take advantage of the curious journalists in the room to hear Alina unpack what she feels. They all owe her a lot. Every session, she is everywhere at once, running herself down, taking the work seriously.
“I was injured myself three years ago. Not near death, of course, but it makes you think. I had an open knee fracture after a rock hit me outside. For months, I learned to climb on one leg. In a way, I experienced a version of their disability, and that helps me guide them,” she says.
At the same time, one of her students, Erman, a lean 37-year-old, is fighting his way up an impressive overhang on lead, climbing with the rope and clipping protection as he goes. Rope clenched between his teeth, he has had a prosthetic on his right leg for two years. A former soldier, he also stepped on a land mine in the brutal Donbas region.
Alina Bieliakova cuts the interview short to cheer him on, filming his effort in 4K so she can break it down with him afterward. After a brutal section, the former serviceman manages to flash the route — sending it on his first try.
Above the Horror
Back on the crash pad, he modestly says the performance comes from his long life as an athlete. A former cyclist and standout swimmer, he could not imagine giving up his competitive streak after the accident. Quite the opposite.
“I come every week. I want to get better than Alina. That’s my number-one goal,” the new climber says from his six-foot frame, needling her a little. “I’m kidding. More seriously, the adrenaline does me a world of good. Now I’m waiting for the NGO’s summer trips outside. Bouldering is great, but I need air.”
Second Wind is planning mountain trips for August 2026, a prospect that has these veterans excited. After completing their service in the armed forces, they can once again cross Ukraine’s borders. “The destination hasn’t been set yet. My dream would be for all of us to go climbing together in Turkey,” Alina Bieliakova says, visibly moved, as she coils her ropes.
Ukraine releases almost no information about the number of soldiers wounded at the front, for both strategic and psychological reasons. In 2026, President Volodymyr Zelensky put the figure at nearly 400,000 wounded. According to the National Health Service, about 120,000 amputations have been performed since the war began four years ago. The conflict has also forced millions of people to flee their homes, inside and outside Ukraine, making it the largest war in Europe since World War II.
But sometimes, out of all that horror, extraordinary stories still emerge. In 2025, two former members of Ukrainian intelligence, both amputees, inspired the internet by climbing several Himalayan peaks back-to-back.
Proof, maybe, that aiming for the summit can still land you somewhere in the clouds.
