This Canadian was wounded fighting for Ukraine. Here’s his survival story

This Canadian was wounded fighting for Ukraine. Here’s his survival story

The group of battle-hardened soldiers fighting for Ukraine had only just been dropped off in a forest full of Russians when the mortars began to fall.

One of the first explosions sent shrapnel tearing through Shadow’s uniform, piercing his chest and torso and shredding the arteries and veins in his left arm, leaving blood pouring out uncontrollably.

“My friend put one tourniquet on me, [but] the bleeding kept going,” said the former Canadian soldier, now volunteering in Ukraine’s defence, in an exclusive interview with CBC News. “So he put two tourniquets on me … at some point, I wanted to sleep … just a little nap, and they were like, ‘Stay with us, stay with us.’ Those guys — basically, they saved my life that day. So I will be forever grateful.”

This dramatic, front-line account of a direct attack and medical evacuation amid Ukraine’s conflict with Russia is rare from a foreign fighter, offering insight into what can happen in the war zone.

CBC is not identifying Shadow, a nom de guerre he uses on the battlefield, over concerns his family would be targeted should he ever be captured. 

He was stationed for three months in the heavily contested region of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, the scene of intense fighting as Russian soldiers have slowly advanced over the summer months.

CBC first met the 34-year-old native of Sherbrooke, Que., more than two years ago, shortly after he arrived in Ukraine, along with an approximate 20,000 other experienced foreign fighters, to volunteer in the battle against Russia. That figure comes from the Lieber Institute, part of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

It’s not clear how many Canadians have taken part, but some estimates suggest around 550 over the entirety of this chapter in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. 

Global Affairs Canada (GAC) doesn’t track the number of front-line deaths of Canadians in Ukraine, but told CBC it “is aware of the deaths of 20 Canadians in Ukraine since February 24, 2022.” GAC said those aren’t necessarily all combat deaths.

Gravely injured, but intent on still fighting

Now recovering after multiple surgeries in Ukrainian hospitals away from the front lines, he recalls the seconds after he was struck.

“The pain was horrible,” he said. “But the medic was in another foxhole and they were all under mortar fire, too.”

Morphine, normally administered soon after an injury, would not arrive for more than an hour, after Russian forces ended their bombardment of the forest, trees splintering around the troops from the explosions.

Despite all this, Shadow wants to get back to the front as soon as he has recovered.

“It became a huge part of my life. And I like fighting. I like the people here. I like helping Ukraine.”

It will be months before he might be able to return — and there is no guarantee.

“Some shrapnel went through my lung [and] in the liver, which is still there. They don’t know if they will remove [the shrapnel],” he said. “Because of that, I had internal bleeding. I had a huge concussion, brain injuries and also some shrapnel that went through my ear … we don’t know if I would be able to move my left hand again.”

In an attempt to regenerate skin tissue, Ukrainian doctors have sewn Shadow’s hand to his waist. It will still take weeks, if not months, and only after that will the stitches be removed.

Russia making slow progress in grinding war

Russia’s progress on the battlefield is seen by some as a strategy of “last man standing,” with enormous death tolls on both sides. But Russia, which is much larger by every measure, is indeed advancing inside Ukraine itself.

“Russia is making slow and grinding progress in eastern Ukraine,” said Prof. Walter Dorn of the Royal Military College of Canada, who noted that Ukraine still holds territory in the Kursk region of Russia. 

“It is surprising that Russia is not devoting more effort into removing Ukrainian forces from Russian territory. It suggests that Putin’s primary goal is to seize all of Ukraine’s Donbas [region] before eventually negotiating away some of the other territories.”

Both sides await the results of the U.S. presidential election in November.

“If former president Trump wins, it will be very dire for Ukraine in all manner of U.S. support — for example, weapons, funds and diplomatic support,” said Dorn. “That is why Ukraine is preparing itself to be more independent, for example, by raising taxes on its people and businesses.”

Visit to Canada on hold

Shadow says that while he was fighting, he wasn’t able to take cell phones to the front lines, because Russia can use them to pinpoint the location of Ukrainian forces. So, on video recorded by his unit’s commander after he was hit, Shadow is heard asking his friends to ensure his phone is sent to the hospital.

He used it to text his parents back in Canada.

“I think they miss me. I’ve been trying to go back home to visit,” he said. In fact, the patrol that ended in his wounding was supposed to be his last after three months of constant fighting. He’d intended to return to Quebec to see family, including a young daughter who was born after he left for Ukraine.

“It’s hard, man. Missing the entire childhood of your child. But she has everything she needs, other than my presence,” he said.

While recovering from his injuries, he continues his work with Doves of Freedom, a group he founded, which raises money to purchase and retrofit drones for use on the front lines.

He says several of his drones have already been used against Russian targets, including armoured vehicles. He claims the drones, which cost about $500 apiece, have destroyed more than $850,000 of Kremlin-controlled weapons systems. 

Some of these drones, he says, have been used in Kursk, the border region inside Russia that Ukrainian forces invaded earlier in the summer. 

When Shadow began his fight in 2022, defending Ukraine’s capital region against the rapidly advancing Russian army, he fought alongside another Canadian, Wali. Together, they worked as a sniper unit, dispatched to take down targets from afar. 

Wali has since returned to Canada — but Shadow continues to believe he can make a difference in Ukraine. Although he still proudly identifies as Canadian, Shadow says he feels no pull to return to his home country permanently.

“I really want to make a difference in this world,” he said. “I’m right in the centre of this conflict �… it’s like the best job I’ve ever had.”

Published at Thu, 11 Apr 2024 22:52:23 +0000

Women share anguish of fleeing abusive husbands in India where marital rape isn’t a crime

WARNING: This story contains graphic discussion of sexual violence.

A tear rolled down the 21-year-old’s cheek as she recalled her wedding night in India three years ago and the start of the history of sexual abuse she says she endured.

She said it was the first time her drunken husband forced himself on her, but was far from the last.

“He would have sex with me without my permission. It didn’t matter if I was comfortable or not,” said the young woman, whose name isn’t being released by CBC due to the abuse she faced in the relationship.

“It wasn’t only occasionally. He would force himself on me all the time, six or seven times a day, and I never agreed to it.” 

The new bride had just turned 18 and said she was at pains to understand how her in-laws, who could hear the abuse through the thin walls of the family home, wouldn’t help her.

Her husband, however, gave her a clue. 

“My husband used to say that now that we are married, you are my property,” she said. “And after marriage, every wife has to listen to her husband, no matter what.”

That view is deeply ingrained in India’s patriarchal society, where it’s not a crime for a husband to force his wife to have sex with him if she’s at least 18 years old. 

And the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi would like to keep it that way, arguing it would be “excessively harsh” to make marital rape illegal — an issue that’s expected to come before the country’s Supreme Court after numerous delays.

‘Women are just appendages,’ advocate says

Women’s rights campaigners have long sought to change the law, but it’s been an uphill battle. 

“Women are just appendages — appendages of the father, then the husband, then the son,” said Mariam Dhawale, general secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA).

AIDWA is one of the petitioners in the ongoing court battles to criminalize marital rape in the South Asian country, which has persistently high levels of sexual violence against women.

India’s colonial-era penal code dating back to the 1860s was recently overhauled, but in the section that states rape is illegal, there’s a notable exception — it’s not rape if non-consensual sexual acts are committed by a man with his wife, as long as she’s 18 or older.

“It’s more than frustrating; it is angering,” Dhawale said.

She called the legal system “exploitative and unjust” toward Indian women, and said it’s because sexual violence is so normalized in the country.

However, the case now in the hands of India’s Supreme Court — after a lower court’s 2022 split verdict on the legality of marital rape immunity for husbands — could be pivotal for Indian society. A date for oral arguments before the top court hasn’t yet been set.

Activist calls India ‘anti-women’

In early October, Modi’s government submitted its affidavit to the Supreme Court, outlining why it’s against making it a crime for a man to rape his wife if she’s not underage. 

Changing the law, the document reads, would be “excessively harsh and therefore, disproportionate,” and could cause “serious disturbances in the institution of marriage” when there are already “sufficiently adequate” legal protections for married women against sexual violence. 

People don’t understand that this is happening and this is wrong. Women are made to believe that it does not exist and it’s not something that is even worth talking about.– Monika Tiwary, counsellor in New Delhi

The government also argues that, within a marriage, there is an expectation of “reasonable sexual access” to one’s spouse, although the affidavit adds the expectation doesn’t entitle a husband to force his wife to have sex against her will. 

Dhawale and other activists aren’t surprised by the government’s stance.

“This government is highly anti-women,” she said. “It doesn’t see women as independent identities.” 

‘I kept saying no’ 

The long and painful legal battle to criminalize rape within marriage is particularly disturbing for women who fought hard to be freed from abusive relationships. 

“I kept saying no, but he just would not listen,” said a 33-year-old rape survivor who escaped her husband’s home, in a village in one of India’s poorest states, with her two daughters. The CBC also isn’t naming her publicly because of the abuse, which in her case included death threats.

She said she would have panic attacks when her husband approached her, but it took 12 years of constant rape for her to muster up the strength to leave because she feared she had nobody to turn to for help.

“The answer would be, ‘You’re married, this is normal,'” she said. “If you are a man [in India], you have all the rights and girls have no rights.”

She was adamant that husbands need to be punished for raping their wives. She acknowledged, however, that it would be difficult to get the law changed because of the deep-seated belief in India that a husband has the right to do what he wants with his spouse.

Women are told “not to make a scene or a ruckus,” she said. Still, she wants wives suffering at the hands of their husbands to raise their voices loudly.

“The girls should not stay quiet; they have to keep trying to get away while they are still alive.” 

Counsellor says few survivors seek help

For counsellor Monika Tiwary, it’s a constant struggle to break down the taboo around speaking about marital rape.

She’s been working with sexual assault survivors for more than a decade in New Delhi, yet can count on one hand the number of women who had reached out for help after being raped repeatedly by their husbands.

“Very few survivors come forward,” Tiwary said, calling marital rape a hidden but widespread problem.

“People don’t understand that this is happening and this is wrong. Women are made to believe that it does not exist and it’s not something that is even worth talking about.” 

A rape is reported every 16 minutes in India, according to statistics in a 2022 National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report, “Crime in India.” Although official data is scarce, most activists estimate only a tiny fraction of women who experience sexual violence lodge a complaint with authorities.

According to the most recent government National Family Health Survey, an average Indian woman is 17 times more likely to face sexual violence from her husband than from others.

More than a third of married women surveyed had experienced physical, sexual or emotional spousal violence, with six per cent admitting they had suffered sexual assault at the hands of their husbands.

Hope endures in struggle to protect women

The court case on whether to criminalize marital rape is inching forward in a climate of increased scrutiny over the prevalence of sexual violence against women in India. 

In August, thousands protested the rape and killing of a trainee doctor while she was on a long shift at her hospital in the western city of Kolkata, and hundreds of thousands of doctors went on strike to demand better safety measures for female health workers.

I want to keep living. I don’t want to go back.​​​​​– Abuse survivor in India, 21

Activists say little has changed over the years, despite previous high-profile incidents of rape, with the conviction rate for accused rapists remaining low, at around 27 per cent, according to the NCRB.

In 2012, a 23-year-old physiotherapist died after being beaten on a moving bus and raped using a metal rod. The widespread demonstrations and global outcry that followed prompted the government to implement stiffer rape laws.

“It’s a struggle going on all the time in India” to better protect women against sexual violence, including those suffering silently in abusive marriages, Dhawale said.

Dhawale holds out hope the Supreme Court will decide in the petitioners’ favour — a move she said would be a huge first step in starting to change the mentality in India toward consent. 

Young survivor still chasing her dreams

The rape survivor who was married off at 18 also hopes there will one day be a law against marital rape. 

But she’s more concentrated on forgetting her painful past.

“I feel very depressed when I think about it. I don’t want to remember any of that,” she said, her voice breaking.

She said she’s still on medication she was put on after being hospitalized following a severe beating by her husband.

But she’s also determined to stay strong and move forward in her life. She’s filing for divorce, and is living in a shelter and taking high school equivalency courses with the dream of becoming a makeup artist. 

“I want to keep living. I don’t want to go back.”

---

For anyone who has been sexually assaulted, there is support available through crisis lines and local support services via the Ending Violence Association of Canada database. ​​If you’re in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911.

Published at Wed, 16 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000