"I did not learn to live without hands, I just lived". The story of veteran and TikTok blogger Yevhen Kholodnytskyi

In the car, a pixelated jacket hangs on the driver's seat. The driver's name is Yevhen Kholodnytskyi, and he drives the car without both arms – they were amputated after he was seriously wounded in the war. Also, due to his injury, Yevhen has no eye and both legs are severely injured. This does not prevent him from running 20 kilometers a day, traveling and raising his dog. Yevhen tells us about his "normal" life in blog on TikTokwhere he has 34,000 subscribers.

LIGA.net talked to Yevhen about what it was like to volunteer for the war at the age of 19, lose both arms and an eye, but learn to live without help and blog about it.

Where it all began

Sosnytsia in the Chernihiv region is a village of 3,000 people amidst meadows and forests, with the Desna River flowing nearby. Shops, cafes, a school, a lyceum, a kindergarten – everything is like anywhere else. Yevhen, now 23, was born and raised here.

"My mom and dad gave birth to me, and I grew up running around like all children. I played, went to the river, rode a bike," says the guy, sitting comfortably in the driver's seat of his car. His Armed Forces jacket hangs on the back of the seat. Yevhen is missing both arms – one arm is at wrist level and the other is mid-forearm. "I was not creative, I didn't like to draw or sculpt. My mom works as an accountant, my dad is a pensioner, he is also a military man. They also live here, run a farm."

Yevhen's father volunteered to defend the country in 2014, when the Anti-Terrorist Operation began. Yevhen was in the sixth grade at the time and remembers it well. His father served for a year and a half. After the ninth grade, Yevhen went to study to become an accountant, and then entered the university to study the same specialty. He worked abroad – packing apples at a factory in the UK – "working like a horse," he says, 12-14 hours a day with one day off a week. So he worked for six months and returned to Ukraine.

Yevhen has been involved in sports since he was a child – crossfit, weightlifting, running – and was a multifunctional athlete. So when he returned to Ukraine, he got a job as a trainer at a local gym. He liked this job better, but it lasted only a few months, because in February 2022, a full-scale war broke out. Kholodnytskyi was 19 at the time.

"In the morning of February 24, my mom called me, I was staying at my girlfriend's place, and told me that the war had started," says the young man. "I got dressed and went home. By the time I got there, my father had already packed his backpack to go to war. There were battles around Chernihiv, the bridge to the Moscow highway was blown up. We were isolated for a while. And then, when the road connection to Chernihiv and Kyiv was restored in the spring of 2022, my girlfriend Alina left."

For two more months after the Russian invasion, the guy stayed at home, training and meeting with friends. Then his father returned: he had already been "discharged" for health reasons in 2015, so he served as long as he could. When the Russians withdrew from Chernihiv, it became possible for him to return home, and he did. And then Yevhen left.

"I did not become Super Rex"

"There's a war in the country, so I got up and joined the army," says Kholodnytskyi. "You're healthy, strong, hardy, and a grown man. Why stay at home? I'm not going to leave this place. I'm not going to make my life anywhere else and start from scratch either, because I like it here. This is my home."

In April 2022, Yevhen came to the local military enlistment office. He passed a military medical examination and received his military ID card. He even managed to stay close to home for a few weeks – Yevhen was enlisted in a local defense company, where his former physical education teacher was the commander. He tried not to send him far away.

Later, Kholodnytskyi was transferred to an infantry battalion based in Chernihiv Oblast. After basic training, he was redeployed to the 33rd Mechanized Brigade. According to the official record in his military ID card, Yevhen's position was a radio operator. But in the unit, he did almost everything – he helped as a medic, even tried himself as a drone operator.

"My military career was not so special," says the guy. "I did not become a Super Rex, I did not sit in a trench for months, I was not an assault pilot. I fought quite modestly. The last place I was in the war was in Zaporizhzhia region, in the village of Robotyne."

"You see an ordinary picture. And then – hop. And everything went out."

on October 19, 2023, Yevhen was at his position. The morning began as usual: arrival at the location, checking drones, the task for the day – reconnaissance, operation of strike UAVs, control of enemy vehicles. At 12:00, Yevhen wrote a short message to his mother on Telegram: "Everything is fine." An hour later, he was being evacuated with a serious injury.

It all happened suddenly: a 120-mm mine landed, and the blast wave triggered the initiation board of their drone, which was supposed to launch it into the air. The drone detonated right next to it.

For several seconds, Yevhen could not see, hear or feel anything. When he regained consciousness, he realized that shrapnel had damaged his eyes. He could only hear his comrades' voices; they dragged him to a safe place and bandaged his wounds. Yevhen told them how to apply tourniquets more correctly. He waited for several hours for the evacuation vehicle to arrive. He says it's not a long time for the frontline, you can wait even 12 hours. All this time he was conscious, but there was not a single thought in his head – he was just waiting. He was the only one who was wounded that day, and a few days before that, Yevhen's friend died. A mine fragment hit his artery and he died in a few seconds.

"I was just lucky," says Kholodnytskyi. "If I had been standing half a meter closer, I would have been dead. When the ambulance arrived, they took me to the car, injected me with anesthesia at the stabilization center, and I 'blacked out'.

"No, they don't. They won't grow anymore, so why suffer?"

Then there was a hospital in Zaporizhzhia.

Yevhen received numerous shrapnel wounds – both legs, both arms and his head were injured. His helmet and anti-shrapnel collar saved his life: everything that was covered by armor remained intact.

At the stabilization center, the guy was put into a medically induced sleep, and then the bleeding was stopped, a blood transfusion was performed, and his wounds were treated and partially sutured. The blood loss was heavy, but, as he says, "not enough to die."

His limbs suffered the most. His left arm was literally torn off on the spot. It was amputated in the middle of the forearm, and the right arm was amputated at the level of the wrist. The right leg was severely damaged below the knee, and the left leg was broken above it – a fragment destroyed the femur, there was an open fracture. The fragments hit his head and eyes: one eye was so damaged that doctors could not save it and had to remove it. The other eye remained intact.

Yevhen stayed in Zaporizhzhia for several days. As soon as he regained consciousness, he asked the doctors for a phone to call his mother. She had already heard about his injury from his commander, and now Yevhen briefly told her that everything was fine. The next day, his mother and Kholodnytskyi's girlfriend Alina were already in Zaporizhzhia.

A few days later, Yevhen was transported to Dnipro, to Mechnikov Hospital, where he was treated for about a week. Then came the Kyiv hospital Feofania and five months of rehabilitation. The main focus was on restoring the mobility of his legs. Due to the fact that Yevhen was lying down for a long time and his legs were straight all the time, his knee joints lost their flexibility and developed a contracture, when the joint almost stops moving normally.

Therefore, Yevhen worked with physiotherapists and rehabilitation specialists, developing his joints to learn how to bend his leg, squat and walk again. He was fitted with a prosthesis to replace the removed eye, but he cannot see out of this eye.

"I didn't learn to live without hands, I just lived," he adds shortly. "You can do everything like everyone else. You don't need your fingers to pick up a cup of water. I didn't need any special attention."

When his wounds healed, the issue of prosthetic arms arose. Yevhen took advantage of a government program that fully covers the treatment, rehabilitation and manufacture of prostheses for wounded soldiers. It took almost a year to make bionic prostheses for both hands for Yevhen. He received them in the summer of 2025. However, he did not use them.

Back at the prosthetics center, Yevhen trained to live with his prostheses – he tried to perform different movements with them, got used to the design. But he quickly realized that he was already used to living without his hands and the prostheses were only in the way.

"It's much easier, more convenient and faster for me to do everything without them," he says. "When you live without hands, you somehow learn to do everything yourself. If I've learned to do it without a prosthesis, then why the hell do I need it, I wonder."

When asked how he survived the moment of his injury and amputation, Yevhen answers briefly and firmly: "I didn't."

"I'm a simple man, I took it as, well, hell, I don't have a limb," says Kholodnytskyi. "I have the ability to walk, I have my common sense, I have my eyesight. A man has to take it in stride, not sour, not snot. They don't have them and they won't grow back, so why suffer? To put it bluntly, I have lost the ability to tie my shoes and cross-stitch. Everything else I do is quite normal. I don't tie my shoes, so I just buy shoes with elastic laces."

"This is not a story of indomitability"

While still being treated in the hospital, Yevhen started a blog on TikTok under the nickname @evhenii.rd (Mr. scar). He now has over 34,000 followers. It all started by accident: he got bored in his hospital room and decided to post his first post – two photos: "before" the injury and "after".

"And this one post somehow it got five million views, probably. The first audience appeared quickly, and I started posting the first days of rehabilitation, memes about lost limbs, how I wash windows and respond to comments, work out in the gym, sit on a motorcycle, fry eggs," Yevhen recalls.

One of his most famous videos was thatwhere he jokingly drew a pupil on his eye prosthesis. "It's just plastic in the eye, so you can be a little creative," he explains: "Draw a pupil". So I did. And the video got about a million views."

Initially, the blog was a place where Yevhen showed how he was adapting to life after his injury – videos from the hospital, moments with prostheses, everyday trivia. "I just filmed different videos: with the prosthesis, eating, doing something. People were interested in it. Then, when I returned home, the content changed and became ordinary: dogs, cats, training. But no one is interested in it anymore, because it's standard." Over time, Yevhen lost a bit of interest in blogging.

"I'm not interested in emphasizing the injury or all the 'moves' with prostheses. Because it misleads people. It creates a distorted picture of what life is like after an injury, because in reality, not everyone's life changes dramatically. For me, it is normal. I drive a car, dress myself, no one follows me, no one spoons me. Not much has changed for me."

"I'm like an ordinary pensioner"

In April 2024, Yevhen returned home to Sosnytsia. He got a dog – a Cane Corso, a girl named Rhea. "I have a Labrador, and my girlfriend has a Labrador, so I decided to get another one. I don't know, what else is there to do?" he smiles. Now the guy works with the dog, socializes it and leads a quiet life with a lot of free time.

"I'm just like a regular pensioner. I woke up, ate, gathered the dog and went for a walk. To the forest, to the lake, to the river. I go for a ride," he says.

Modern technology, the veteran says, makes life easier for everyone, including him. It takes him a couple of minutes to put on his socks instead of a few seconds. After treatment, when he was allowed to go home from the hospital, he got behind the wheel. His first car was an automatic. Later, he bought an old Toyota with a manual to drive his dog. He shifts the gears, as well as the steering wheel, himself:

"I shift like all other people, with my hand," explains Kholodnytskyi, who spends most of his time in the car. "I don't have fingers, in fact, but I have a hand. You don't need your fingers to shift gears. It's the same to open a door, a window, to light a fire on the stove-everything can be done. Most things don't require fine motor skills."

Today Yevhen has fully recovered from his injuries. His legs have healed and the pain is gone. He returned to running – he runs 10 to 20 kilometers per training session. He started running this summer, although his first attempts were last year, but then his leg hurt – there was a metal plate in it that was removed not long ago. He runs wherever he goes: at the local stadium, on the roads of the village, in Rivne, Warsaw, even in London, where he went on vacation. Recently, he took part in a charity race in Kyiv. Sport, as it has been for the past ten years, has returned to his life.

"Don't feel sorry for us"

Today, Yevhen lives a calm, orderly, and highly independent life. He lives in his own house, plays sports, raises a dog, spends time with his girlfriend and travels. He is not looking for a job yet.

"My pension is about 30,000 now," says Yevhen. "I don't think it's a penny. Of course, I want more, but who doesn't? It's enough for me to fuel my car and pay for everything I need. While I was serving, I received a salary, combat pay, and sick leave. I was not put out of service, all the documents were drawn up. I paid nothing for prosthetics and treatment, except for the eye prosthesis. The eye cost 5000 UAH – it's not outer space."

Nowadays, as Yevhen explains himself, he looks at society as if from the outside, as he does not work on a schedule and is in no hurry. His blog includes videos from a trip to the Carpathians with his girlfriend, walks with his dog, workout videos, and driving trips. Followers are less likely to ask about his injury, but many are interested in how he drives, "why he is working out" and "who needs him now, except for his mother." The guy records humorous videos explaining that he continues to live his life.

"It's important for people to understand that wounded soldiers and veterans are still members of society, and they shouldn't be pitied," the veteran believes. "I'm the same as I was, and I'm still the same. I used to hang out with my friends, and I can still meet them now. I mean, no one notices that I have no arms. I'm just as much a member of the company as I am on vacation, at a picnic. It's not some kind of invincibility story, no. There is nothing supernatural in the fact that a person, even after hardships in life, health problems, comes back to himself. You get some limitations, but you continue to live."

Read also: Race for life. A report from Mechnikov Hospital in Dnipro, where seriously wounded soldiers are being brought