The first thing you notice about Russo-Ukrainian war veteran Petro Buriak is that he wears prosthetic legs. https://shorturl.at/4Yb9l
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00:46Before the full-scale
00:48invasion, he was a truck
00:50driver, who was bringing big trucks
00:52around the whole Europe and basically the whole
00:54world. Bringing goods from Ukraine.
00:56Nobody
00:58I had to locate everyone because the family was in Lviv, and I was abroad at the time, I was working.
01:03So I came back home immediately, took part in the defense.
01:11So when the full-scale invasions began in 1942, I was in Spain, bringing the cargo on a truck.
01:18As I was listening to Ukrainian radio later, so I was in Spain, the whole thing started.
01:32It was early in the morning, 7 o'clock in the morning, and I realized that this whole thing started.
01:39And I called my manager, who was managing the drivers, and told him, Vitya, which is for Victor.
01:47Yeah, a name, a diminutive form of Victor.
01:51Vitya, you know, the war had started, and his manager, who was in Ukraine, tells him, what are you talking about?
01:56So he knew it before those guys.
02:00Turn on the TV, it's there.
02:03So I told him, look, I'm going back, so do all the papers so that the car will be left in the garage, which is in Poland.
02:14So I did my job in Spain, we did everything we should, and then I came back to Warsaw, Poland, left the car there,
02:26asked them to pay me for my trip, and I came back home.
02:31So when I was crossing the Ukrainian border and the border guards, he gave him his passport,
02:40and I looked him in the eye and said, thank you for coming back home.
02:50That was Easter time, it was early spring, and it was Easter time,
02:55and he thought he would go directly to the military conscription office,
02:59but then he thought, okay, I'll spend a week with my family, because this is Easter.
03:03But in fact, he didn't spend this week at home, as he planned,
03:07because he went to this cargo company that was doing some volunteer support,
03:13voluntarily supporting Ukrainian forces, and so he was, you know, helping them to bring the goods from the trucks to the depots,
03:22and so he only spent the holiday with family.
03:28Easter holiday, he was at the conscription office, he was never in the military before,
03:35he just arrived there as a fresh mint coin,
03:42and so they formed the battalion, and they were moved to the front line to defend the country.
03:51And no one told him, you don't have to come back, a few years ago you got a heart attack,
04:00you got some serious heart problems, your eyesight is not perfect, you never held a rifle in your hands before,
04:10you're not fit for the service, so I was absolutely against his even coming back to Ukraine.
04:20But still, there he is.
04:30Well, he already decided.
04:33What could you do, you know, to try to scold him?
04:38It wouldn't help, so he already made the decision, so I said okay,
04:44but before that I told him, look, you can do all sorts of, all kinds of jobs to help the front line,
04:51you could bring in the goods, you could do something else,
04:55you could help some organizations that are helping the front lines,
05:00but not becoming a military, not becoming a soldier.
05:03But he already made his decision, he made up his mind, so there was no other way around it.
05:19I cannot really explain this feeling, but I had a bad premonition,
05:25I had some bad feeling about it, but I cannot explain it.
05:29I was, he just called me the other evening, and everything was fine,
05:34and I knew that next day he was going to work, but he was not absent for a few days,
05:42there was no, you know, he was there, just the other evening, the other night,
05:48and the next day it happened, but this whole time I had this bad premonition, which I cannot explain.
05:58It was just the other day, it was September the 6th.
06:14Kids were at school, and the younger daughter started her preparation for the school,
06:20that was her first day preparation for the school.
06:24And it was just another day, I took the kid back home, and we were preparing something,
06:31and then my daughter was in the kitchen, and she started crying,
06:36my legs, my feet hurt, they hurt so much.
06:41She was crying wildly, she was just sobering, with tears like running from her eyes,
06:47she was in pain, but we thought that she fell and hit herself somehow,
06:52but she never felt there was nothing, she was not injured, she was not hurt.
06:57But later we realized that this was exactly the timing,
07:02when Petro, the husband and father, was hurt, was wounded.
07:07He was about 17, 30, 18 years old.
07:13So I was dialing all the numbers I knew in his regimen.
07:16It's war, so sometimes the soldier calls from some other number,
07:22so a number of his friend, his comrade, his brother in arms,
07:28and she was dialing all the numbers that were somehow associated with Petro.
07:35And one of the soldiers was the one who was...
07:38one of the numbers was one of the soldiers with whom he served.
07:43He was reluctant at first to say anything at all,
07:46but then he said...
07:49I just checked one thing, so whether I got her right or not.
07:52At first he didn't want to speak,
07:55but then he said, I don't know, he said,
08:00So at first he was reluctant to share any information,
08:03and then finally she kind of...
08:12made him answer during this conversation.
08:17And he said clearly that Petro was wounded,
08:22that he was wounded, that he was wounded,
08:25during this conversation.
08:27And he said clearly that Petro was wounded,
08:30and that he lost both of his legs,
08:33and that he's evacuated.
08:45So it was one small town somewhere nearby
08:51which are both seaports,
08:55and then it was his hometown.
08:58I wake up, there's my wife,
09:00he grabs me and says,
09:02Hey, like we sort of say,
09:05I don't know how we say it,
09:08so he listens, you know,
09:11something like,
09:13Hey, my kitten, my rabbit, my...
09:16Hey, my little rabbit,
09:19you've got...
09:33And he says, look,
09:36she says, we're in Odessa.
09:38And Pablo says,
09:40look, you know that there is a factory in Odessa
09:44for producing prosthetic legs.
09:47And go grab me a couple,
09:49because my boys are waiting for me.
09:59The hardest thing is to lose your brothers in arms.
10:04The easiest part is when you go back to your boys.
10:19In this situation,
10:21you don't really have a chance to think it's easy or it's hard.
10:26Well, you're strong,
10:29you're free, and you're independent, right?
10:59The answer is yes.