As Ukraine’s war with Russia grinds into its fourth year, the country is contending with a staggering toll of wounded soldiers and civilians — and an emerging generation of amputees reshaping what survival looks like in a nation under siege.
A new documentary highlighting the country’s wounded veterans screened this week at the French ambassador’s residence in Washington, D.C. The film, “Second Wind,” follows four amputee soldiers and a female sniper, all severely wounded in combat, as they climb Mount Kilimanjaro — an account of grit and perseverance that comes amid one of the largest waves of war-related amputations in modern European history, and that mirrors the country’s struggle to rise out of conflict.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that around 380,000 Ukrainian troops have been wounded since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. International medical organizations estimate that between 20,000 and 50,000 Ukrainians — including soldiers and civilians — have undergone amputations, with the World Health Organization saying the total number could approach 100,000.
The scale and severity of those injuries has put enormous strain on Ukraine’s medical and rehabilitation systems, with hospitals and prosthetic centers operating well beyond capacity.
Filmed by Kyiv-born director Masha Kondakova, “Second Wind” documents the physical and psychological rehabilitation of soldiers injured by mines, artillery fire, and drone strikes before they undertook their climb up Africa’s highest peak. Kondakova, who began filming on the front lines of the conflict in 2014, said she wanted to focus not on the war itself but on what follows survival.
“We didn’t want to make a movie about the war,” Kondakova said in an interview with CBS News at the embassy of Ukraine in Washington. “That was not the purpose at all. It’s about our simple people, simple guys and one girl who became heroes because they’re constantly overcoming their personal limits.”
“Just take one step, and you will find your second wind. Maybe not with the first step — but with the second, you will,” she said.
Kondakova, who previously directed award-winning films about Ukraine’s female soldiers and de-occupied zones near Kyiv, said “Second Wind” completes a trilogy about resilience. “My first movie was about women at war at a moment when women didn’t have positions in the army as fighters, and then a short, fictional movie about youth stolen by the war,” she said. “This third one — from the trenches in the east of Ukraine to the summit of Kilimanjaro — is about the resilience of our defenders. About how our scars become our strength.”
Among them is Mykhailo Matviiv, a soldier who lost a leg to a Russian airstrike and has since returned to the front lines to work as a drone operator on the eastern front. In an interview alongside Kondakova, he said returning to the front was not a question of choice.
“I can’t live a normal life while my brothers are still at the front,” he said, through translation. “The injury created some doubts because I don’t want to hold anybody back. But this experience showed me I can still be helpful and useful, as if the injury were not there.”
Matviiv, who applied his own tourniquet when he was wounded, said he had witnessed enemy forces intentionally target one soldier in order to attract medics or evacuation teams, only to then strike a bigger group.
He added that the film’s purpose was not to seek pity but to motivate. “It’s to show that life doesn’t end with an injury,” he said. “You just climb your own personal summit, step by step.”
The documentary has already been shown in Ukrainian military hospitals, where Kondakova recalls one of the most emotional moments of her career.
“We were downstairs in a top secret [bunker] because otherwise we could be a target,” she said. “I was sitting behind one of our defenders, very young, who had just had this experience of amputation but no prosthesis yet.”
“People were crying or so emotional,” she said, “I had a feeling they were with [the film’s subjects] for each joke, they laughed as if they were together.”
Ukraine’s newly appointed ambassador to the United States, Olha Stefanishyna, said at the screening in Washington that the film was an important reminder for Americans in particular of the value of continued U.S. support for Ukrainian soldiers.
“It is very important to me that Americans can see what the true spirit of freedom is, and why their support matters,” Stefanishyna said. “This film shows that our Ukrainians — despite losing their legs — continued to fight, and they carried that spirit to the top of Kilimanjaro.”
The film arrives as Ukraine faces a long-term rehabilitation crisis. The Ministry of Health has said demand for prosthetics, particularly bionic limbs, has gone up sharply since the start of the war. Medical facilities such as Superhumans Center in Lviv — one of the country’s most advanced prosthetics facilities — are operating at full capacity, while thousands of soldiers remain on waiting lists.
Kondakova and her team have since launched The Second Wind Project, an organization designed to connect amputees through sports and peer support. “We want every wounded soldier to feel the shoulder of a brother-in-arms,” she said.
She said she hopes “Second Wind” can also help raise awareness among policymakers and potential donors. “The process of prosthetics and rehabilitation is long and expensive,” she said. “We need not only money, but expertise — veterans, doctors, specialists who can share experience.”
For Matviiv, who said after the film’s U.S. screenings he will return again to the front near Pokrovsk, where some of the most intense fighting of the war continues, the message is straightforward. “We are still fighting,” he said. “Any limitations that we have, we keep going and we keep defending.”
“Second Wind” continues an international tour this month, with screenings scheduled in New York, London, and Paris.
