When he was wounded in fierce fighting near the eastern city of Bakhmut in March last year, Ukrainian soldier Yevhenii Korinets thought he was going to die.
“I had almost said goodbye to life”, he told Reuters in the town of Reshetylivka. “There was one thought in my mind: ‘I’m 25, I haven’t been anywhere, haven’t travelled anywhere, haven’t seen the world and now I’m dying”.
Seventeen months on and Korinets’ life has turned around.
The former military paramedic, whose left leg was amputated at the hip, qualified for the national sitting volleyball team and spoke during a break from training with fellow athletes ahead of the Paralympics in Paris which opened on Wednesday.
“Now I am travelling, I’ve been everywhere: the United States, China, countries like that, and obviously Europe too”, Korinets said in early August during a break in drills in a gym in central Ukraine.
He is one of around 140 Ukrainian athletes competing at the 2024 Paralympic Games, a competition that has taken on added significance after Russia’s full-scale invasion that has left thousands of soldiers and civilians with life-altering injuries.
Russian and Belarusian athletes can only compete as neutrals without flags after their participation in global sports events was severely curtailed following the invasion.
