Issue 14. The Body

War changes not only bodies but also how society sees and treats them. French sociologist Ioulia Shukan has spent years following wounded Ukrainian soldiers through hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and in their efforts to find a place in civilian life after traumatic injury. Her research looks beyond stories of heroic recovery after an amputation. It asks what it means to live with a prosthesis, and how families, communities, and institutions help people find a way forward. We sat down with her to discuss what happens after a severe wound.

You conducted your first study on wounded soldiers in Kharkiv, where you spent time with a group of female volunteers at a military hospital in 2015. How and where did you begin your second project, on recovery after limb amputations?

In rehabilitation centers across Lviv, Kyiv, and other Ukrainian cities. This is a longitudinal study, since the recovery process itself is very long. I return to the participants at different stages to document and understand their journey. An amputation is not merely a physical rupture; it’s a biographical disruption. It alters a person’s self-perception, their capacity to imagine a future, their professional identity, and their place in society. What follows is a search for a way out of this critical juncture.

Why critical? Because we are talking about loss of mobility, impaired bodily functions, and extreme dependence on family, nursing staff, and doctors, especially in the first months after the amputation. Their military identity has been fractured, and they face growing uncertainty about their professional future. An injury is a bifurcation point: the person has to determine whether they can return to the military, or whether they need to search for a new profession.

I try to trace the path from the moment of injury to the return to civilian life. After severe injuries, service members retain their military status for about a year; and only then comes demobilization and the search for oneself. This involves navigating new professional opportunities and relations with their community, and a quest for meaning: trying to make sense of what happened, why, and what comes next.

What does this biographical disruption mean in daily life?

If someone has a double amputation, it means they can’t independently go to the bathroom, eat, or get up and walk somewhere. There are also professional complications. Before, the person was a soldier, an identity forged rapidly in the context of full-scale invasion and intense combat. After the injury, total confusion sets in: “What do I do now? I want to return to the military; my brothers-in-arms are counting on me; I have a sense of duty.” There’s such a weight of responsibility, even a feeling of guilt.

I recall an interview where a soldier who had been living with a prosthesis for a long time. He told me he couldn’t just go out for drinks with friends anymore, because alcohol made his residual limb swell the next day, and he couldn’t get his prosthesis on. I had never thought about that sort of mundane thing.

I agree with the focus on the "mundane," because we‘re dealing with everyday things that people don’t always tell us about. When we build narratives around soldiers with amputations, the emphasis is almost always on heroism, on transcendence: it’s as if the person has to rebuild themselves and overcome all limits, physical and social.

How much alcohol, or water, even, can you drink without the residual limb swelling by morning? When you’re going somewhere, you have to plan the route in advance – work out what kind of surface you’ll be walking on, if there are stairs, if there’s a ramp. How do you move around the subway on a prosthetic limb when people are distracted and might bump into you? It’s this constant navigation of uncertainty, this needing to think through everyday things that don’t even occur to us when we have all our limbs.

Is there a difference in how everyday experiences shift for women compared to men? Have you explored this aspect?

Unfortunately, women are underrepresented in my sample. But yes, of course there’s a difference, due to body-related norms. We can touch our bodies, we can look at ourselves in the mirror, but there is also a social dimension to the body; it acquires meaning through interaction with others. For a woman, particularly in Ukrainian society, how that body is perceived is important.

I observe how women with amputations communicate, how they negotiate the tension between femininity and biographical disruption. They show that a prosthesis can be beautiful, and that it in no way takes away from the body’s beauty. Yet women face the same challenges getting around, and experience the same vulnerability in simple day-to-day activities.

Have you researched the experiences of wounded civilians, or just military personnel?

I focused on military personnel. I know there’s a gap between civilians and military personnel, also in terms of financial compensation. Ukraine has a very robust state-funded prosthetics program that’s been running since 2016. And there’s a very palpable disparity here, because the funding allocated for soldiers is roughly three times higher than for civilians.

This situation is characteristic of any war, because the body is assigned new priorities in wartime. Military bodies are prioritized, because the soldier represents the frontline, defense, and the very survival of the nation. There are brigades with robust support services that coordinate with prosthetics centers in advance, so that the person doesn’t have to go searching: there’s an established route. Although not for everyone. There are clear disparities, depending on the brigade, the individual’s own resources, or the structures they’re attached to.

Civilians have to navigate this alone. When an electronic knee is required, civilians can’t get one with the money that the state provides, and will probably end up walking with a hydraulic prosthesis. Help may come from charities where civilians can get prostheses that are as advanced as those soldiers receive. Because they’re working outside the state system.

I want to reiterate that this is typical of armed conflicts. The post-war dilemma will be about whether we level civilian support up to the military standard, or whether economic constraints will lead to a leveling downwards.

How does a person, a soldier or civilian, experience the transition from their pre-injury body to their post-injury body?

To call it "difficult" would be an understatement. I believe we have to distinguish between the psychological and the sociological here. As a sociologist, I focus on interpersonal interactions and connections with communities and institutions. Sociology looks for the tensions in these relationships; bodily transformation is experienced precisely through these tensions.

I see a disconnect between the expectations of wounded soldiers and the way the system functions. Soldiers feel lost, especially in those first days, weeks, and months when they are searching intensively for solutions. I see a desire among many service members and their families for someone to take them by the hand, guide them, and provide information, for care to be institutionalized. So that there’s a clear path from treatment to prosthetics to rehabilitation – and eventually social inclusion.

The system views wounded soldiers as consumers in a service market. The “client” has to independently research what technologies are available, go to two, three, or four prosthetists, evaluate their options, and only then work out what’s best for them. There’s a tension here too. Some adapt immediately and can navigate the market as informed individuals, while others need advice and support. Some have more resources, and some have fewer, in terms of family, finances, and social ties.

And then there’s the relationship with the prosthetist. A person who has undergone an amputation wants their original body back; as one prosthetist told me, they "dream of a miracle." Acceptance that the body will never be what it was before the injury is something that comes gradually. There can be tension with a prosthetist who, taking age and activity levels into account, recommends solutions that don’t satisfy the patient. Some dreams of bionics get shattered.

A third friction point is the very complicated logistics of daily life. This mundanity sits in tension with the heroic image of renewal after injury.

One enormous difference between military and civilian amputees seems to be that wounded soldiers often receive a lot of support from an established veteran community, whereas civilians have to find that community for themselves. Speaking of friction points, where do the wounded actually find support?

You have a point, there is a veteran community. I’ve met people who were amputated between 2015 and 2017; at that time, there was a very small community of people who knew each other personally. Back then, amputation was the exception, rather than a “normal” fact of war. That community has now expanded.

During the year the state allocates for rehabilitation, soldiers remain in regular contact with peers who suffered similar injuries. In Lviv and its region, for instance, there are rehabilitation centers where up to 150 soldiers with amputations live side by side for months. This means community, empathy, and a space where people can share advice, and compare their bodies and capabilities with people further along in their recovery.

Since 2022, this community has also shifted online, through Threads and TikTok. There are some very small communities, for example, people with high bilateral arm amputations, and there are broader ones too.

The primary support anchor is the family. In most cases, wives, sisters, and mothers are by the soldier's side after the injury. But some soldiers end up alone, and a lack of support affects their recovery trajectory in the long term.

Then there are volunteer and civil society organizations that people can lean on. Hospital volunteers are another helpful community. I see people who have moved to Lviv from Kharkiv, where they had been volunteering in hospitals since 2014, and continue that work there.

All of these communities are equally important. They’re about breaking down walls and demonstrating the various opportunities for wounded people to find their place in their new lives and new bodies – through sports, business, leisure, and interaction, and through institutions.

I often feel that could be an illusion. Only a small number of people – those popular with the media – really find their way after prosthetics, while others don’t. Can you argue against that?

We do not have statistics on the numbers of soldiers and civilians with amputations. We know the numbers have gone up, even since 2024. Drone warfare and technologies that inflict bodily harm affect the numbers of wounded.

Media narratives around prosthetics are centered on the idea of growth and linear progress: amputation is the starting line, then we hear about how the person rises up and reinvents themselves through business, sports, or activism. But post-traumatic growth is highly individual and non-linear, and it doesn’t come to everyone. On the contrary, people can fall into depression.

There’s a risk here that we only focus on trajectories of growth that are highly publicized, and that we forget about those who also defended Ukraine, but disappear from the narrative because they are struggling. Society expects growth after an amputation. And when it’s hard, when the person has no one to lean on, we don’t hear those stories.

And so there’s another risk that I see here – the double penalty. Meaning that the person is broken not only by war, but by a lack of recognition of how hard their experience of recovery is.

As a journalist, I fell into a similar narrative trap when I was working on a project about wounded veterans. It was published, and people with various experiences of rehabilitation took part. But afterwards, a friend pointed out that it didn’t feature a single person who wasn’t coping.

It’s also hard for me to find respondents in vulnerable situations, people who are still looking for their way, or who haven’t found it and have dropped out of sight. People prefer not to be interviewed about their own vulnerability. They think they don’t match the ideal image of the soldier post-amputation. Yet it’s really important to speak about these setbacks. We forget that the person who’s mastered their prosthesis generally needs one or two years of hard work first to get there.

I see people avoiding certain topics. For example, dependence on others, on their families. They don’t want to come across as a burden. Or they avoid the topic of psychological rehabilitation: “I’m not sick”, they’ll say. A common refrain in interviews is "I mastered the prosthesis very quickly." But when you witness the agonizing work, the constant falls, the constant pain, you understand what they want to avoid talking about. I call this "evaporation of vulnerability."

We’ve spoken about how after the injury, wounded soldiers and their families wish someone would take them by the hand and guide them on. Patient support services often play that role. What happens when someone finishes rehabilitation and returns to ordinary life? Does that support continue?

The people I speak with continue to work with support specialists where possible. When they can’t find one, or don’t consult, they rely on communities of meaning. Communities of veterans united by shared combat experience, sometimes by the same type of injury, and therefore the same daily struggles and activities, like sports, a job, or veteran rights activism.

Based on my research, a soldier's wife provides the closest and most consistent support. It is the wife who searches for information. From the outside, it might look like a lot of information is available, all systematized and easy to find. But when you talk to soldiers and their wives, you understand what difficult work they do.

From the moment of injury, life is mediated by disablement. The body is constantly changing. Osteophytes [bone spurs] can develop, where the bone grows back, or neuromas [pinched nerves], where the nerve endings grow back, and these require re-amputation. Disablement is a long process. I think bridges could emerge between non-combat civilian disability communities and military amputees: they can all relate to this experience, and can make collective demands on the government.

What about interactions with the broader public? Even in Lviv, a city that has become a major rehabilitation hub for all of Ukraine, people with amputations can feel misunderstood. For example, when residents react negatively to a ramp being installed in a stairwell.

I think Ukrainian society is learning very fast. Through my research, I can see how much local communities are helping, adapting buildings despite unequal financial resources, for instance. Getting around in a village is practically impossible for amputees but communities are gradually learning to adapt spaces.

Society cannot switch overnight from viewing disability as a radical otherness to seeing it as a difference of ability. Wheelchairs and prosthetics fully help only once we remove social barriers in public spaces and workplaces.

In the center of Lviv, you can see a lot of soldiers with amputations, and people do look at them. I always ask respondents how the public reacts. Most interactions are positive. People stop, thank them for their service, and offer help without imposing themselves, respecting their boundaries. But of course, there are situations where neighbors complain about ramps, or don’t take an interest in other people’s experiences.

How does social acceptance, or lack of it, affect people with amputations and their relationship to their own body ?

One man I spoke with, who is very active on Threads, had this happen to him recently: a mother was walking with her child, and the child asked point-blank, “Why doesn’t that man have arms”? The mother brushed the question aside, which was hurtful to that man. He later mentioned it on social media, asking how others would have reacted. This sparked a discussion within the community.

In some cases, older people say, “Oh, goodness!” when they see a prosthetic limb. Many veterans I interviewed say that passers by give you money when you’re moving around in a wheelchair. That’s also hurtful.

But because the sight of a person with an amputation has become so common, I would say such incidents no longer affect a person’s self-image. They’re not alone, they see others are like them, some more active, some less. I would say there are two kinds of reactions. Either they use these moments to educate the public, or they remain in a close-knit circle and ignore what’s outside of it.

Do you talk about physical pain with those you interview, and how they manage it?

Pain is discussed a lot. It is a clearly defined clinical component of the recovery process. Pain is always experienced. The real issue is how to learn to live with chronic pain, how to manage it. In hot weather, the rubber liner that the prosthesis goes over can chafe, and corset prostheses can pinch. We also talk a lot about phantom pain. There is no universal remedy there. Medicine is helpful for some, and mirror therapy helps others. Sometimes the phantom pain stops once they begin putting weight on a prosthesis. It’s very individual, and it’s hard to generalize.

Is there a noticeable difference in how soldiers perceive state-funded prosthetics compared to the ones offered by charitable foundations?

Everything tied to the state has baggage – it’s associated with bureaucracy, delays, and questionable quality. When an injury occurs, families immediately start collecting donations because they don’t know that there’s a state program where they can receive a high-quality prosthesis. Many soldiers try to get into high-profile charitable foundations. Support services help establish contact with these organizations. Yet nearly 90% of wounded soldiers receive their prostheses through the state program, which, I should emphasize, is effective, has withstood the shock of the full-scale invasion, and allocates substantial funding for prosthetics.

The war started in 2014 so the public conversation about including veterans with disabilities began a while ago, or perhaps that wasn’t such a long time ago... Can a fully inclusive society emerge?

I think Ukraine is on that path. Inclusion is more of a continuum. Some countries are very inclusive, others are more prone to exclusion. It is helpful to understand the journey toward inclusion as an aspect of how war always speeds up change and focuses our attention on policies of care, on concern for others. All wars bring about enormous changes in these policies, given the numbers of wounded.

The philosopher Elaine Scarry describes war as a politics of intentional bodily injury. What do we do with bodies damaged by war? Before the wound, they were needed to defend the nation. But after the war, society retains a collective responsibility for these severely wounded people – to support their physical and psychological rehabilitation, and to make a place for them in the workforce, in civic space, and in shaping the decisions that determine their future.

Ukraine is walking this road. The social model of disability and the importance of barrier-free spaces entered public awareness in the early 2000s, with various state programs, even bonuses for businesses that managed to hire people with disabilities. But it was really all on paper. The issue now is how far inclusion will become institutionalized, beyond the documents. The war has provided a chance to put these policies into practice.

Translated from Ukrainian by re/visions.

Proofreading by Katharine Quinn-Judge.