For many returning Russian veterans, a long road to recovery awaits
Aleksandr had just two weeks of training in Russia before being sent to the front lines in Ukraine in the summer of 2023. About a month later, he was an amputee.Learning to live without your left leg takes much longer than two weeks.“At first there was a lot of pain,” said Aleksandr, 38, referred to only by his first name according to military protocol. But, he added, “eventually, your brain rewires itself and you get used to it.”Aleksandr spoke in an interview at a sanatorium on the outskirts of Moscow as a doctor readjusted his prosthetic leg. He is one of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers returning home after a third year of war to rejoin government institutions and a society struggling to provide for veterans in a time of sanctions and the parallel realities of the seemingly un...