After spending 491 days in a death trap his left foot rotting away from the cold, and his right leg amputated by his own hand using a dull knife Kostyantyn Vlasenko finally received the call he had long since given up hope of ever hearing.
For the past 231 days, the Ukrainian soldier had been entirely alone, hiding inside an iron furnace within a deserted school ever since his only companion, a comrade with the call sign ‘Basque,’ was killed.
He and Basque had taken shelter there the previous winter, after the cramped, underground concrete drainage pipe where they had spent the first eight months flooded with water, forcing them to flee.
But the skies above this position in the Kharkiv region of eastern Ukraine were so swarming with enemy aircraft that the heavens had turned “murky” completely blanketed making any evacuation impossible. A Russian drone eventually discovered their hideout, killing Vlasenko’s comrade on his fiftieth birthday and leaving Vlasenko himself severely wounded. Now, he was told that an attempt to extract him would finally be made.
“It’s being planned,” his commander said over the radio. “Everything is nearly ready. Just a few final details to iron out.”
The next sentence left the 49-year-old veteran infantryman stunned. “Instructions will be dropped to you today,” the commander added.
“Instructions? What kind of instructions?” Vlasenko whispered to himself. “What, for God’s sake don’t I know how to crawl out of a hole?” He was certain that an unmanned ground vehicle would be sent for him, or that a quad bike the standard Ukrainian method for evacuating the wounded from the front lines would arrive to pick him up.
But he soon got his answer. A drone dropped a sealed bag at his position, containing a nylon harness, a rope, some hooks, and a phone loaded with a video explaining exactly what he needed to do. As he watched the footage, he suddenly grasped what his officers had in mind.
“I realized it was going to be an aerial drone, because in the video, the [drone pilot] says, ‘I’m going to come down, and when I land, you need to do this and that…'”
“It would land and fold its rotors so I could crawl underneath it.”
On October 4, Ukraine’s 92nd Separate Assault Brigade dispatched a heavily modified bomber drone to Vlasenko’s location in Petropavlivka, executing what is believed to be the first-ever unmanned aerial evacuation of a wounded soldier in military history.
In the incredible footage, Vlasenko can be seen strapping himself to the drone’s underbelly, giving a thumbs-up to the camera, and then ascending 400 feet (120 meters) into the air before being flown 11 miles to safety.
The drone was accompanied by a formation of three ‘Vampire’ drones intended for combat against Russian forces one of which was shot down by the enemy. Now recovering in a hospital, Vlasenko whose call sign is ‘Kostya’ recounted the astonishing story behind his evacuation to Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov.
Wearing a cap emblazoned with ‘Grozv Defence’ the company that manufactured the drone that rescued him he describes the operation: “I have no words… it’s a marvel. It’s a miracle.”
Vlasenko’s eyes remain sunken, and after spending 16 months on the front lines most of which was passed underground or in darkness his skin is deathly pale.
He shifts restlessly, stroking his sparse, grey beard as he recounts his story while sitting in a wheelchair at the hospital.
Raised in Kryvyi Rih Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown in central Ukraine this father of one was working as a truck driver when the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
After insisting on enlistment at a recruitment office, he was assigned to the 2nd Battalion of Ukraine’s 30th Mechanized Brigade.
On June 2nd of last year, Vlasenko was ordered to evacuate a wounded comrade who had stepped on a “petal mine” (a Soviet-designed landmine) and to take up a position within a concrete drainage culvert.
It was here that he met Baski. An opening had been made in the middle of the culvert, leading down into an underground “shelter” a dark pit barely large enough to sit in.
Vlasenko and Baski would take turns hiding in this “shelter” while the other kept watch in the culvert above. Ukrainian drones delivered food to keep them alive. They were scheduled to be relieved from their position after two months, but Russian Mavic drones soon dominated the skies, making any exit impossible.
An attempt to rotate them out failed. “They tried to relieve us once, but they couldn’t reach us,” he said. “Later, other comrades went out just to recover their bodies, but they couldn’t get through either. They weren’t able to bring them back. So, I told them there was no need to come for me.” “It is better that I die alone, rather than more people dying.”
After spending eight months in a drainage pipe, it began to fill with water on February 14.
“We crawled out, and we were already soaked as we moved forward,” he said. “Then, a severe frost set in again… I had absolutely no strength left. We were already extremely weak.”
The pair managed to reach a ruined school without being spotted and requested supplies to be delivered to their location but a Russian reconnaissance aircraft soon spotted the delivery of Ukrainian drones. “Then they started dropping explosives,” Vlasenko said.
“My leg was hit, but my feet were so badly affected by frostbite that I didn’t even feel the impact. Essentially, my left leg was shattered. I could still stand on my right one. Then our guys came and dropped some food; while going to retrieve it, I twisted my right leg. After that, I couldn’t move properly at all.”
Driven by desperate hunger, Baski went out to get some food. But an enemy drone appeared and targeted him.
Vlasenko reached him, but lacking a flashlight he could not see the extent of the wounds in the darkness. All night long, he could only listen to his comrade’s groans, feeling completely helpless.
“He was just groaning… he couldn’t really say anything… I pulled him as close to me as I could. Then, he fell silent…”
“By morning, my comrade had passed away. I couldn’t save him. He died on his 50th birthday. He never got to celebrate it.” God gave him a gift, and then took it away.
“I was left alone on February 16th. As dawn began to break, I covered him up.”
His position had been compromised. Vlasenko stood up on his injured leg, grabbed his rifle and whatever gear he could carry, and attempted to escape. As he did so, he heard an explosion nearby.
“It turned out they were giving me a warning,” he said. “Later, they dropped a loudspeaker that was playing a recording urging me to surrender.”
The loudspeaker told him: “Brother, we know you’re there. Believe us, your comrades aren’t coming to save you.”
“You heard that explosion? The next one could be aimed at you. We don’t want to kill you.”
“Place a box or a bottle on the window ledge, and we’ll know you’re ready. A white light will guide you [pointing toward a drone]. Then captivity, the prisoner exchange pool, and home. Yes, that’s right home.”
Instead of complying, Vlasenko responded with the now-famous defiant phrase used by the defenders of Snake Island a small outcrop seized by Russia in early 2022: “Russian warship, go f*** yourself!”
“Unfortunately, they couldn’t hear me,” he joked.
He radioed his commanders, who dispatched drones to destroy the loudspeaker, but they were unable to locate it.
“Twenty minutes later, their ‘big drone’ arrived,” Vlasenko said, referring to a Russian bomber. He curled up on his side, gritted his teeth, and waited for the explosives to drop. ‘Then came the blast,’ he said. ‘What a blast… I thought I was dead. It was pitch black.
‘I opened my eyes, but it was still dark. I wondered if I could even see at all. But the fact that I could feel sand between my teeth meant I was alive.
‘And that damned loudspeaker just kept on playing…’
Vlasenko managed to crawl inside an iron stove he spotted amidst the rubble.
“There was a small opening… I don’t know what angel pushed me in there,” he said.
A few moments later, a drone dropped another massive explosive charge. “Everything started collapsing on top of me,” he recounted. “That was it. I thought I was… but then I felt that same sensation again: sand between my teeth. So, I was still alive.”
He remained there for the next eight months. His comrades would send food and medicine into the school ruins via drone; he would crawl out from the stove to retrieve the supplies, then crawl back inside.
He also continued his surveillance, reporting whatever he saw or heard regarding enemy movements.
While lying there, he observed how the human body “pushes foreign objects out on its own.”
“Shrapnel fragments began to work their way out of my body,” he said. By April, however, his injured left foot severely affected by frostbite had rotted away and eventually detached completely.
Yet, this was not the end of his harrowing ordeal.
The following month, his right leg which he had twisted became completely numb at the ankle, and gangrene set in. Vlasenko describes how it began to “dangle.” “The lower part of my leg was just hanging there,” he said. “Every time I crawled out to retrieve supplies, it would pull further on the bone. The skin was sloughing off.”
“I realized I had to cut it off. I knew it couldn’t be saved anymore.” ‘I wanted to keep at least one foot. But it wasn’t to be so, it wasn’t to be.’
‘I placed it on a brick and picked up a knife. Tears were streaming down, but I had to cut it off. So, I did.’
As the weather began to warm, he recalls seeing hundreds of large orange-and-black butterflies fluttering where his severed legs lay.
For months, his only companion was the radio, through which men at other outposts would signal ‘450’ code for ‘all is well.’ He said, ‘When I heard the men at other observation posts reporting “450, 450” I thought, “I’m still connected to someone…”‘
‘And that was it. Then, silence… I would wait for a report every hour. Just knowing I wasn’t alone hearing someone else brought me joy. I was on the verge of losing my mind… it was so incredibly lonely.’
But his men didn’t abandon him; they used drones to send him chocolate, sweets, tea, and cigarettes. ‘They pampered me, in a way just to bring me a little happiness, a bit of a distraction,’ he said. ‘My wife sent a parcel. They packed it up and dropped it off to me. Inside was a book by Stephen King: The Outsider.’ Vlasenko was surprised; he hadn’t realized that his wife, Tetyana, had noticed just how big a Stephen King fan he was.
Throughout those long days, the thought of his daughter, Khrystyna, kept him going. “I hadn’t given enough attention to my daughter,” he said. “Perhaps it was this realization that made me want to change something a thirst for life… but I had also already decided that I was as good as dead.”
Then, about a month ago, his comrade, Sergeant Lisi, radioed to say that a rescue plan was being put in place.
He received instructions, and soon the drone arrived. As it lifted him into the air, Vlasenko says he was terrified of being dropped into the river, as he did not know how to swim. During the flight, he spotted a Ukrainian drone transporting supplies to the other side. “That was something else, too seeing it fly right past me,” he remarked.
“I want to thank everyone… everyone who did so much to make this happen,” he said. “I don’t know them all, but I want to offer them a part of myself. I am incredibly grateful to them.”
Despite his extraordinary survival, Vlasenko feels uneasy about his new place in history as the first soldier to be evacuated via an aerial drone.
“I don’t like being the first,” he said. “I’d rather be the second.”
