Ukraine’s soldiers are inspiring. Their bodies and families are devastated.

“I haven’t learned how to shake hands firmly with my left hand yet,” he explains. His jacket’s right sleeve hangs loosely after his arm was torn off during a retreat in Donbas on March 3.

He says he is lucky, as the comrade on his left in the armored personnel carrier and the nurse on his right were both killed. In the moment, he saw blood on his shoulder but did not immediately realize he had lost his arm.

Voronov is just one of thousands of soldiers and volunteers wounded in the fighting across Ukraine who have arrived in the western city of Lviv for shelter and care. Under the spring sunshine outside a hospital, I see a few bandaged men in military uniforms, some in wheelchairs. Their faces are exhausted with pain and sadness. The patient flow here is constant.

“I’m not going to get discouraged,” Voronov tells me. “When I was taken out with the other wounded, our soldiers were breaking through the encirclement of the Russians, and some died. They died to get me out. I have no right to be discouraged; they must not die in vain.”