A message dropped from a drone showed the way to survival

Over half a day, Serhiy Vivsanyuk crawled three hundred meters across a field, repeatedly losing consciousness and, each time he came to, trying to move on. Shrapnel had pierced his lung, his arm and leg were injured, and his thirst became increasingly unbearable. The Russian positions were only a hundred to a hundred and fifty meters away, and a message dropped from a Ukrainian drone let him know that he could not be rescued from there: he had to gather all his remaining strength and crawl further away.

The soldier, 24 years old at the time and originally from Cherkasy region, had worked in agriculture before the war, and he never hid the fact that he hadn't been in a hurry to enlist. He had thought that if he was needed, he would go; he received his draft notice in July 2022, and from September 13 he served in the 1st Separate Tank Brigade. The following summer, on the Zaporizhzhia front, they had to hold a strip of forest that Ukrainian soldiers had earlier recaptured from the Russians.

Their positions were shelled all night with mortars and tanks, and then Russian soldiers got so close that close combat broke out. Serhiy used up all fourteen of his hand grenades when a Russian grenade flew into the trench where he and two of his comrades were. He managed to jump aside and duck his head, which saved his life, but shrapnel wounded his arm and pierced his lung. Even wounded, he kept fighting, and only after the Russians retreated did he set out with four comrades toward the evacuation point.

On the way they came under fire again, and another piece of shrapnel this time hit Serhiy's leg. He was bleeding heavily, so he applied a tourniquet given to him by one of his comrades himself, then asked his comrade to keep crawling on. He wanted at least one of them to survive, and he stayed behind in the middle of the field. He spent the night out in the open, and after a while he no longer even knew how long he had been lying there. When he finally reached a road, he noticed another soldier, but at first he couldn't tell whether it was a Ukrainian or a Russian in front of him. He only recognized the man as a member of his own unit when he crawled closer. Both of them were completely exhausted, their water had run out back in the trench, and during the day the sun beat down on them mercilessly.

At that point a drone appeared above them, and at first Serhiy had no idea whose it was. But the aircraft soon dropped water, medicine and food to them: Ukrainian National Guard soldiers of the "Kara-Dag" brigade had spotted the wounded men during aerial reconnaissance and tried to help them. Serhiy tried to eat too, but he was so dehydrated that he could barely even swallow. Later the drone delivered a message written on a cigarette pack, warning him that he was too close to the Russian positions, so they couldn't reach him there. To be rescued, he needed to get farther away, so he gathered all his remaining strength and set off again. "I just kept crawling, crawling, and then… I blacked out," he later recalled of the half day during which he covered about three hundred meters. By sunset he had reached a dip by the roadside, where he pulled earth over himself, covered himself with grass, and lost consciousness again.

When he next woke up, he heard human voices: Ukrainian soldiers had come for him. The National Guard soldiers put him on a stretcher and carried him for about five more kilometers until they reached a place from which he could be transported further. Serhiy fought for his life with severe wounds for a day and a half before he was finally brought to safety. He later said that out there he had lost almost all hope. "At that point I wasn't even thinking about it anymore, and I didn't really hope that my life's story would continue," he admitted when recalling what had happened.

In August 2023 he was recovering in Khmelnytskyi region, getting around on crutches, with a long rehabilitation still ahead of him, but by then he was already talking about returning to service and about life after the war. After his recovery, he wanted to rejoin his comrades, and later to get married, start a family and grow old, so that one day he could tell his grandchildren everything he had been through. The soldier who, lying in the field, had barely believed there would be a continuation, once again has plans.