CALGARY \u2014 Mac Hughes looks at his body and the permanent reminders of a Russian drone strike last year.<\/p>\n
Angry red, diamond shapes outline skin grafts on his legs. Mottled grey and purple skin covers his feet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey look kind of gnarly, almost like \u2018Call of Duty\u2019 skin on my legs or a painting,\u201d says the 23-year-old.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been thinking about cool tattoos that I should do \u2026 to make it look like my legs are on fire with flames or something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Calgary man, in a phone interview with The Canadian Press from his apartment in Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine, says he still faces more recovery. But he\u2019s walking again and almost able to run.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s eager to get back to his unit with the Ukrainian armed forces.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing\u2019s changing. The war\u2019s going on. It\u2019s not going to go away for at least another couple of years unless the world actually does something and steps in and stops Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tuesday marks four years since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Hughes has been there since almost the beginning.<\/p>\n
He joined his father in doing volunteer work in the war-torn country then signed up with the military after a close friend died in the fighting.<\/p>\n
Last Canada Day, he heard a drone nearing his position and ran, but it exploded and pinned him between a car and a wall. He then caught on fire.<\/p>\n
He begged fellow soldiers to shoot him. They refused and eventually freed him. He suffered burns to one-third of his body.<\/p>\n
There have been several surgeries. Doctors also moved some of the nerves in his legs, Hughes says.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore this I couldn\u2019t move my foot, and now the foot\u2019s working. I can see a noticeable difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ukraine, especially the Kharkiv area, about 30 kilometres south of the Russian border, has been hit with freezing temperatures and constant Russian attacks, leaving many without power.<\/p>\n
Sitting at home in the dark with his girlfriend and three abandoned cats they rescued, Hughes says the upcoming anniversary of the Russian invasion likely won\u2019t register with most people.<\/p>\n
\u201cSadly, it\u2019s just going to be another day for the guy on the front line,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou deal with so much stuff here and you lose a lot of friends. I can easily name 15 or 20 people that I know who have died, and they were good friends of mine. They come and they go and death and destruction is a real part of war.\u201d<\/p>\n
His father, Paul Hughes, headed to Ukraine from Calgary five days after the invasion. He initially planned to fight but ended up providing aid and set up his own charity, HUGS, or Helping Ukraine Grassroots Support.<\/p>\n
There has been no electricity or heat at his Kharkiv apartment for a couple weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou wear the extra hoodie inside and cover yourself in blankets, extra thick socks,\u201d the 61-year-old says about staying warm.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sucks. Because it\u2019s really tough to have a shower when it\u2019s cold, because you get all that humidity in the air. I can deal with it. I\u2019m a Canadian,\u201d he says in a phone interview during one of his daily deliveries.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow you have water mains breaking as well, because the stuff starts freezing up. And it\u2019s been a disaster \u2026 such a disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n
He stops to deliver a camp stove to an elderly woman and medicine to another, an air raid siren wailing in the background. He sighs in frustration.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s multiple sirens every day. The Shahed (drones) coming in almost every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
A year of peace efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s government has failed to stop the fighting. Earlier this month, the U.S. gave Russia and Ukraine a June deadline to reach a deal to end the war.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have zero optimism on that front, because Trump is so incompetent \u2026 he seems to be in Putin\u2019s pocket,\u201d says the elder Hughes, referring to the Russian president.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe seems to be, as they say over here, an operative for the Russians.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both father and son say they intend to eventually return to Calgary but not any time soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cKharkiv is my home now,\u201d says Paul Hughes. \u201cWe committed to this and now after four years for us to walk away is just not appropriate.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the war is over, we\u2019re going to be heading home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CALGARY \u2014 Mac Hughes looks at his body and the permanent reminders of a Russian drone strike last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194293],"tags":[49,2798,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-492742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-calgary","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-calgary","10":"tag-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}