UCU Helps Ukraine: Mykhaylo Berega

Mykhaylo was born in Moldova, village of Grigoresti, Singerei region, now is a resident of the Stepove village in Kirovohrad region. He used to work as a construction worker in Kyiv, mainly in outside decorations on high-rises.

He was mobilised into the army and transferred to the war zone. Mykhaylo served as a grenade-gun operator with the 17th tank brigade, 40th battery, 1st company. He was injured in Debaltseve, at 9:30am in early February 2015. This is Mykhaylo’s account of what happened «My shift ended at 5:00am, at 7:30am I and my partner were ordered to accept a position on the roof. I was shooting with my grenade launcher up until about 10:30am. After that they started shelling us from mortars, missile launchers and tanks and we were ordered to come down. When I was coming down, I took my grenade launcher with me to clean it up and entered a room which, I thought, was safe. A mortar shell exploded in about seven meters from me and my back took a lot of fragments. I just had taken my bulletproof vest off, as I had spent three hours in it, crawling, my back had ached. I was falling like in a slow motion, the pain was tearing my back in two… We did not have medics at the time, I was taken into an armoured personnel vehicle, then was moved to the hospital in Artemivsk by car. After that, I was transferred by an ambulance to Kharkiv’s Meshchaninov Hospital. In the Neurosurgery ward, they stitched up my head but my spine was operated on only in several days in a different hospital. The majority of the fragments were extracted in Vinnytsia where I was airlifted. They fixed my intestine which was blocked and I had constant nausea and vomiting. In Kharkiv they told me I wouldn’t be able to walk, but in Vinnytsia they said I would be alright and transferred me to Lviv».

Mykhaylo’s diagnosis: Mine trauma (02.07.15 g.) HSMT. Fragmentation blind penetrating wound of the chest back surface with the brain lesion (Frankel A). Impaired function of pelvic organs. Neurogenic bladder in hypertensive type. Chronic cystitis, colitis.

To contribute toward Olexander's treatments and therapies, please visit your branch or contact the call centre at 1.800.461.0777 to make a donation.

Lots of photos of the injured soldiers we are helping can be found on our Facebook page in the album UCU Helps Ukraine.

Read the stories of some of our other heroes:

Serhiy, Olexander, Victor, Serhiy, Olexander, Andriy, Anton, Oleksij, Yevhen, Yurij, Serhij, and Ruslan.

Questions and inquiries about this initative can be directed to the UCU Helps Ukraine committee: 
Kateryna Litvinjuk klitvinjuk@ukrainiancu.com
Michael Zienchuk mzienchuk@ukrainiancu.com
Roman Mlynko rmlynko@ukrainiancu.com