Mykola Nizhnikovsky, a disabled resident of Mariupol: from record holder to oblivion under occupation

Mykola Nizhnikovsky, who lost both his legs and an arm, met the full-scale invasion in Mariupol. He, along with his mother and little sister, miraculously survived the destruction of the city by the ruscists. However, a nineteen-year-old boy and his family are still in the occupied territory, living in terrible conditions. Read about the fate of a Mariupol resident who has been a hostage of the Russian-Ukrainian war since childhood and some difficulties of evacuating the disable people in an exclusive material by Ukrainian.Media.

“I was unlucky once, but I'm lucky in general,” Mykola Nizhnikovsky said when we first met. He accelerated so fast in his wheelchair that the medical staff could not catch up with him; he was capricious and cunning when the trainer gave him heavy loads during abdominal exercises; he was a childlike happy to receive birthday gifts from his friends when he turned sixteen. Mykola's mother, Alla, recalls that for the first year after the tragedy, he did not speak at all and did not want to look at himself in the mirror. Later, he got used to his new self and began to cherish his dream of becoming a Paralympic champion.

When you talk to Mykola, you forget in a few minutes that he is missing both legs. He is an ordinary teenager who watches fishing vlogs on YouTube, pierced his ear and likes to dream about long walks by the river. To overcome himself, his own fears, laziness, and uncertainty. The story of Mykola Nizhnikovsky's life has always been less about compassion and more about building tolerance towards people with disabilities - although, unfortunately, this is still process that needs to be re-emphasized in Ukraine. This is a story about the challenges of fate and how to cope with them with the help of caring people. After the destruction of Mariupol by the Russians, Mykola faced another test. He needs help again to escape from hell to free Ukraine.

"It was a piece of my son"

August 4, 2016, Nikolske village near Mariupol. Four children were killed by an RPG (a rocket-propelled grenade) shell. The youngest of the boys, four-year-old Danya, Mykola's brother, died immediately. Three other boys received severe shrapnel wounds. 12-year-old Mykola Nizhnikovsky suffered the most. Military surgeons amputated his right forearm and both legs. In addition, he suffered a severe head injury, a shrapnel damaged his left eye and tore his face.

Near the village of Volodarske there is a training ground where the Ukrainian military were conducting exercises. Local boys were constantly running around the range collecting shells and scrap metal. As the story goes, Mykola Nizhnikovsky found an "interesting" shell. He showed it to his friends who lived in the neighborhood, and the boys decided to examine it. Mykola's younger brother Danya followed the older boys. They dropped a shell and an explosion occurred.

“When I heard a powerful explosion, I jumped out onto the road,” recalls Mykola's mother Alla Nizhnikovska, ”I saw a horrible picture: the children were as if they were spun through a meat grinder. I picked up the bloody Danya in my arms. He took two breaths and died... Mykola was sitting on the asphalt. His legs looked like sliced sausage. His right arm, all broken, hung like a whip. I immediately realized that there had been practically nothing to save: skin, muscles, bones - everything was pierced by shrapnel. His knee was also torn“.

Ambulances brought the injured children to the military hospital, which was located in the village hospital. The military surgeons spent several hours saving the children's lives. They were flown by helicopter to Dnipropetrovs'k, and Mykola Nizhnikovsky was taken to the intensive care unit of the Zaporizhzhya Regional Children's Clinical Hospital. Doctors assessed his condition as extremely serious. To prevent the boy from suffering unbearable pain, he was put into an artificial coma. But despite the worst predictions, Kolya survived. And then he was transferred to the burn center.

After burying her younger son, Alla Nizhnikovska came to visit Mykola in the hospital. The grief-stricken mother looked at her son, and her heart was in wild pain: no legs, a short stump remained from his right arm, his face was disfigured by burns and postoperative scars, with one eye unable to see. At first Mykola cried a lot, then suddenly he withdrew into himself. His mother didn't know how to comfort him. She needed to support herself: so much had happened ... “How are we going to live now?”Alla thought and cried in the hallway, sneaking away from her son.

It's scary to imagine what fate awaited a crippled child from a poor large family living in a small village... But volunteers came to the rescue.

“The patients and staff of the main military hospital surrounded Mykola with warmth and care. The cooks prepared delicious dietary meals for him, and doctors brought some sandwiches from home. The wounded soldiers carried him in their arms and gave him a paratrooper's beret. Communication with our soldiers became a powerful psychological rehabilitation for Mykola.“

Trudeau gives the go-ahead

Meanwhile, volunteers found an opportunity to send Mykola to Canada for treatment. The funds raised were enough to place the boy in the specialized Shriners Hospital in Montreal, where they provide treatment, rehabilitation and prosthetics for children.

Mykola and his mother flew to Canada (at the expense of a French airline). In five months, he underwent several surgeries on his hocks, and ophthalmologists transplanted a donor cornea into his injured eye. He underwent an intensive rehabilitation course, learned to walk and even managed to run on prostheses. Mykola already has his own fan club, which united the Internet users from all over the world. People followed the Ukrainian boy's achievements with great interest.

Mykola is fond of swimming. It is impressive how quickly and skillfully he moves in the water without prostheses and dives into water.

The son is surprised: “Mom, it's much easier for me to swim without my legs, but it's harder to dive,” says Alla Nizhnikovska. Since his body has become lighter, it is really very difficult for Mykola to dive underwater. The trainer suggested him working harder with his stumps, and now her son is stubbornly learning to dive. Our whole day is scheduled by the minute: in the morning Kolya plays football with prostheses, then basketball (he has adapted to catch the ball with his stump), then tennis. In the afternoon, he goes to the pool and gym. The doctors are delighted with Mykola: he comes up with new exercises for himself. For example, he used to walk up the stairs on his prostheses. Her son has become a local legend. Both children and adults come to watch Mykola's workouts.

Meanwhile, Mykola has already inspired other children by his example. A seven-year-old Canadian boy who was injured in an accident is undergoing rehabilitation at the same clinic. The doctors have reassembled his leg and are now teaching him to walk again. But the child is in pain, he is capricious. One day he saw Mykola training on a treadmill. Her son loves to walk on it, turning on almost maximum speed. The Canadian child was shocked: "If this boy can walk, then I, with both legs, can too!" Then they became friends, and Mykola mentored his younger friend: "Just don't give up! You will succeed."

In Canada, Mykola met Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. „I didn't know what Canadians were like before,“ the boy wrote.

“Now the Ukrainian and Canadian flags adorn my 'new legs' like tattoos.”

Trudeau responded and arranged a personal meeting. Mykola brought the prime minister his drawing, which depicted what he had come to love about Canada - Montreal, nature, people. A simple drawing, nothing special, if you don't know that it was drawn with the left hand - the only hand - of a courageous little man.

In Canada, Mykola was operated on twice, because our doctors amputated his legs and he could not stand on prostheses - the "flesh" was not formed allowing him to stand on prostheses without pain. But then some bone would grow back on. Before going to see the prime minister, Mykola shouted that it hurt just as much as it had before. He said: I need to cut my legs off, then I will be able to walk on prostheses. They asked him: "Maybe you'll be in a wheelchair? Mykola replied: "No, I want to walk, and I am ready to have my legs cut." That's the kind of willpower the one must have had!

During his year in Canada, Mykola also had some eye surgeries, and his vision began to recuperate. He also underwent a facial plastic surgery, ear surgery, and began to hear better, and dentures are being prepared for the boy. Prosthetic legs were made and had to be redone 5 times, because Mykola was growing rapidly. He turned from a small, skinny youth into a young man - he gained some weight and height, he matured.

Mykola returned to Ukraine to Zaporizhzhia. Here he faced new challenges. Some unscrupulous "volunteers" began using his name to build a house and with the aim to register it to their names. The neighbors were envious - they were unhappy that the patrons were "paying too much attention to the boy and his mother." Mykola actually missed two grades of school and had to catch up on his own - there are no schools with inclusive education in Zaporizhzhia. And most importantly, Kolya had to undergo a series of surgeries so that he could get around on prostheses instead of the wheelchair.

Mykola is growing up fast (during his adolescence, that is the way it should be), and his leg bones are also growing. Due to the fact that Mykola wears prostheses, his bone stumps tend to rub against the stump beddings and they would crumble. Bone fragments would remain in the soft tissue and begin to rot, if old stitches on the stumps do not have time to heal, the new ones would appear there again.

Mykola learned to endure pain. He learned to endure inconvenience for the sake of victory. He felt responsible to everyone who had supported him, and this is a large group of volunteers. A special credit of trust is due to a swimming champion Oleg Lisohor, who took on the task of preparing Mykola for the Paralympic Games.

Mykola has chosen role models for himself,  he admires Nick Vujcic and hopes to meet him.

Friendship with Azov and broken dreams

Two weeks before the large-scale invasion, Mariupol greeted me with 10 degrees below zero and a chilling wind. Mykola's mother Alla had bought a private house not far from the Azovstal plant. It's hard to imagine a more depressing neighborhood with dirty air: a long fence, from beyond of which you could see the tops of smoke stacks. But Alla was sincerely happy to return to her hometown and now own a cozy three-room apartment. She recalled how she used to work at the plant for a while - assembling some iron appliances, operating a crane, and even dreaming of becoming a welder.

Next to Azovstal, several modern high-rise buildings were being built with a panoramic view of the plant and a slag mountain. It seemed extremely strange to me, that someone wanted to live there. Just to live and look out of the window at the smoke coming from the plant’s chimneys.

Mykola chose his profession and recently became interested in cooking. He learned to peel potatoes very skillfully with one hand. He even developed a plan with his mother to bake custom cakes at home. "There are too many confectioners in Mariupol, there is a lot of competition. Everyone is baking something!" warned Mykola Iryna, a woman with a short stylish hairstyle who owns the coffee shop where he learned to make craft gingerbread. "I was given two in the shape of stars, with the address on the package: Mariupol, Myru Avenue (Avenue of peace in Ukrainian). There is no longer any peace or avenue.

The boys and girls from a local folklore group used to come to visit Mykola's house with his mother. They would dance, sing and make jokes with an actor dressed as a goat. Two months ago, a rehabilitation therapist who worked with Mykola in the gym was extremely unhappy when he was asked to speak Ukrainian because it was "violence." However, after grumbling, he spoke not even in surzhyk (a broken Ukrainian), but in a literary language.

The sea. On Sunday, Mariupol residents walked on the pier, where they could taste delicious hot dogs and feed seagulls with a loaf of white bread. A man was walking near the shore in a rubber suit with a fishing rod - it turned out that he was looking for sunken items made of precious metals. On one side of the wooden pier, there was a view of yachts, and on the other, of the mining spoils. Mykola liked looking at the sea and feeding the seagulls. He also dreamed of traveling the world on a ship.

In Mariupol, not a single swimming pool was open - all of them were undergoing repairs. Mykola loved to swim, and before the quarantine he was even training for the Paralympic Games. We found a luxurious swimming pool outside the city, at the Azov Regiment.

When they found out that a guy with a disability was coming, they organized a whole excursion program. They showed him trained dogs, took him to look at armored personnel carriers. A young Azov soldier with strong muscles taught Mykola how to disassemble an assault rifle. After the incident with the shell, Mykola was naturally afraid of everything related to the military. After his visit to Azov, he stopped being afraid. The guys were very nice. The regiment's press officer, Dmytro "Orest" Kazatsky (the same one who would later make a legendary photo report about the Azov from the captivity), delicately picked up Mykola's elbow, helping him to move up the stairs, instantly assembled a wheelchair to load it into the car, and found the lost crutch in time. And what is important, he communicated with Mykola on an equal footing, without unnecessary sentiment and with respect. Just as he was treated during his rehabilitation in Canada.

Mykola's sister Zlata is 5 years old. She is a smart little girl who is always playing pranks on Mykola, not letting him get bored.

On the New Year's Eve, the wind knocked over a Christmas tree in the central square of Mariupol. But it was quickly restored. The city was flickering with lights, the street lamps on the highway flashed with trident-shaped illumination, and a large ice rink was set up near the Drama Theater.

In March 2022, Mykola turned 18. Someone wrote him congratulations on Facebook. He didn't read it - he was trying to survive in occupied Mariupol. Each birthday is a challenge for him. He celebrated his sixteenth birthday in a Kyiv hospital, recovering from another surgery.

"We did not go down to the basement because the house could have turned into a crypt"

February 24, 2022.

‍“Is there any way to get to their house?” I asked a local volunteer chaplain Andriy Mokhnenko when Mykola and Alla stopped communicating. They did not look at any of my messages "Where are you?“ or "Write to me and confirm that you are alive". The chaplain said there was no way to find out anything. He barely escaped from hell, and a lot of his relatives were there and still did not respond.

Six weeks later, the Nyzhnykovskys called. They were alive. They are staying at a house without gas, and electricity. They go out for food - they are given bread, sausage and juice. They charged their smartphone in the church.

A few days later, the Nizhnikovskys sent a few more messages - photos of their smashed house and saying: “God forbid you survive the bombing. It's terrible.“

It was only in the summer of 2023 that Mykola and his mother and I managed to communicate fully via video. They were as candid as possible under the conditions of occupation.

“If my mom and sister had died, I would not have survived,” Mykola says. After several months being under siege in Mariupol, he had finally realized his complete dependence on his family. The Nizhnikovskys became even more united, supporting one other as much as they could and trying not to show that they were afraid of death.

Mykola, his mother, and sister drank rainwater from a tub in the yard: the water turned to ice and had to be chopped with an ax and melted over a fire. The potatoes stored in the cellar saved them from starvation.

“We never went to the cellar as a shelter, although it is in the house. Mykola could not go down there having his prostheses on. And he couldn't sit there without light in a room.... And if there were a direct hit, the cellar would have become a crypt.”

Mykola and his mother learned all the news from their neighbors, the radio was turned off, and the Internet was out of the question. At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the family tried to leave Mariupol with the help of other Mariupol residents who were fleeing by car, but they could not find a place for a boy with a disability. Mykola never gave up trying to escape from hell.

‍“I really wanted to evacuate, but it was not the best idea, because we heard from our neighbors that evacuation buses were being shot at. Even if we had miraculously gotten there, there would have been a high risk that we would die there," he recalls.”

“It is difficult to move around with Mykola. He has prostheses and a wheelchair. I'm not crazy enough to run under fire. With Mykola, it was just unrealistic at the time. Later, they offered to take Mykola as a disabled person to a boarding facility in Russia. They wanted to take only him alone. Of course, no one was copntent with that option. So we refused it," says Alla's mother.

The Nizhnikovskys turned to the head of the Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine, Iryna Vereshchuk, for help regarding his evacuation. However, they were not able to leave again. The bridge next to their house was blown up, so it was impossible to get to the assembly point near a bombed-out Port City shopping center.

Alla took this answer as an insult:

‍“We have been culturally sent away. There is no possibility. There were evacuation buses in another part of Mariupol. If you want to go there, you had to go through the whole city, it was not clear how to do that. But getting there was our problem. It turned out that no one needed us. Do what you please and survive as you want.“

Staying in and around Mariupol became dangerous not only because of  constant shelling. In the village of Nikolske, marauders robbed Mykola's grandmother - the old woman's arm was broken and she was almost killed. Having learnined about it. Mykola and his mother decided to move to the village immediately to protect their grandmother.

In the village, Mykola faced spartan conditions: the outdoor restroom was a test of strengths for the guy who uses a wheelchair. Cooking in a village hut is just as difficult for a person with one arm, so culinary experiments is a thing of the past. During the day, Mykola mostly stays in his room playing computer games. Sometimes he goes outside for a"dog therapy" - he plays with three dogs he is trying to train.

Mykola doesn't actually use his prostheses, they have finally become too small for him, and occasionally, with the help of his mother Alla, he rides a wheelchair along the broken village roads.

Nineteen-year-old Mykola complains that he was expelled from the last grade of school because of the war - he missed several years of schooling due to a long-term treatment and tried to make up for it. Nizhnikovskyi admits that he misses swimming, but he has already let himself go so far that any previous achievements are out of the question. Only two years ago, he swam across the Dnipro in half an hour. Now Mykola realizes that he needs to work hard to recover, but he would love to continue swimming.

However, for now, Mykola and his mother can only visit the ruined Mariupol to apply for some meager assistance from the occupying state. They still receive payments from the Ukrainian pension fund, but prices in Mariupol remain three times higher than in free, mainland Ukraine. Nizhnikovsky concludes in despair:

‍“I don't know where to go, what to do. This worries me the most. I've hit a wall and I don't know where to go from here!“

Near the Nizhnikovskys' shattered house in Mariupol, there are continuous graves. The corpses were lying right on the street, being eaten by dogs. There were burials next to a store, burials near high-rise buildings. There were as many graves as there was land.

‍“I try to visit my home at least once a month to see what's going on there. Now it's not such a horror, everything is not in such a deplorable state. At the beginning it was a complete devastation. Everything was black, beaten, burned, with big holes in it," says Alla.

There were three shelling strikes near the Nizhnikovskys' house. Then the roof mowed down, it was patched with boards and roofing material. But due to heavy rains, the roof still leaked. Plaster fell off, wallpaper came off. Windows, doors, radiators, and glass need to be replaced. Only the house walls remained.

Mykola and his mother are holding on to these walls. The family received an offer to fly to Canada. They are afraid to make the long journey because of lack of money and bureaucratic issues.

Alla finds excuses: "The father of my youngest daughter Zlata is inviting me to Canada. But it's not so easy to go there, because Mykola and I have expired Ukrainian passports, they are no good for travelling. We are not allowed to leave with Russian documents."

Having experienced another life trauma, Mykola also became skeptical about evacuation: “Of course, I don't mind going to Ukraine, then to Canada. But I don't want to go through more shelling, all this..... I've had enough of Mariupol. But yes, in fact, I would be happy to return to Ukraine.”

This publication has been produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of DW Akademie/ MediaFit Program for Southern and Eastern Ukraine and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.