The golfer swings his club in a graceful arc and then focuses his gaze on the ball sailing 180 meters or so into the distance. He smiles, satisfied that he was able to keep his balance on his prosthetic leg as he twisted to hit his drive shot.
Ukraine’s exclusive and expensive golf clubs have opened to war amputees, who play free of charge. Rehabilitation experts say that sunshine and nature can be healing for the traumatised soldiers, and that the uneven, soft surface of golf courses helps them to master their prosthetics.
But “the main task is just to get them out of bed,” said Vyacheslav Tsiukh, 46, a retired colonel and a new golfing enthusiast.
Tsiukh, who lost a leg to a mine while on a reconnaissance mission in eastern Ukraine, helps other veterans for United by Golf, a group that uses the sport to help rehabilitate soldiers wounded in the war.
“The guys start pitying themselves and thinking their lives are over,” he said. “We have to drag them out of their rooms so they don’t just stare at the ceiling.”
Golf helps Ukrainian soldiers who have lost limbs in the war against Russia to heal and to master their prosthetics.
Out on the golf course, their perspectives change, he said, adding, “They see guys who lost limbs like themselves and have achieved success in this sport.”
So far, about 750 amputees and other veterans with severe injuries have tried golf under the programme, a notable number, given that the Ukrainian Golf Federation estimates that only about 2,000 people in Ukraine played the sport regularly before the war.
Drawing veterans into the sport will broaden its appeal and help revive beleaguered clubs, said Natalia Tereshchuk, a founder of United by Golf and a board member of the Golf Federation of Ukraine.
Golf amidst conflict
Ukraine faces a huge task in rehabilitating amputees from years of fighting in the trenches and on the minefields in the east of the country. The toll is vast, each amputation an immense challenge of adaptation for an individual.
Estimates vary on the number of amputees. The military does not release figures, lest they demoralise the population or signal to Russia how many Ukrainian soldiers remain combat-ready, though some amputees return to the battle.
Ukraine’s National Health Service this year said doctors had performed 93,566 amputations since the start of the invasion in 2022. But that number includes finger amputations and counts each loss separately if a soldier loses more than one limb.
A non-profit providing prosthetics has estimated that 80,000 Ukrainian soldiers require artificial limbs. A deputy prime minister said in December that 35,000 to 40,000 soldiers had lost limbs.
On a putting green of the Kozyn Golf & Country Club in south of Kyiv, Anatoly Melnychenko practiced chip shots on a recent summer morning, sometimes leaning on his club for balance.
One ball rolled to a stop a yard or so from the hole. He looked satisfied. “Not bad,” he said. “I could knock that one in.”
Melnychenko, 40, lost his leg to an injury from an explosive dropped from a drone in May 2023.
He first tried golf just to “get out of the four walls of my room” after his injury, he said. But he enjoyed it enough that he now plays weekly. “Golf is psychological relaxation even while it’s hard physically,” he said, “and it’s great to be with the guys.”
When he’s on the course, he said, “I’m not afraid to walk.”
The veterans allow themselves mulligans, or do-overs, and they have one allowance for disability. Those with less stable above-the-knee prosthetics are allowed to remove their balls from sand traps, lest they topple over trying to swing on the unsteady surface.
Golf is an ideal sport for recovering soldiers since strength or speed isn’t necessary to play, said Davyd Yung, who lost his leg in an explosion of an anti-tank missile and has become an avid golfer. “You don’t have to be pumped to make a good shot,” he said.
Golf courses, like so much else in Ukraine, have been considerably damaged in the war. And while they offer an often bucolic respite for amputees, there are constant signs of the war that has dragged on for three and a half years.
At Kozyn, birch and poplar trees line the fairways and gentle swales of the 18-hole course. The water traps are ponds filled with lily pads and cattails. Birds chirp.
But there is a military firing range next door, and the rattle of machine guns can be heard at earsplitting volumes between the third and fourth holes.
Groundskeepers at the nine-hole Lisnyky Golf & Villas, also outside Kyiv, find charred, twisted debris from Russian exploding drones on the turf, as the course is under an air defense firing zone. The club can open only after clearance teams remove debris.
The prospects are grimmer at the Superior Golf Club & Spa outside Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, where stray rockets, shells and bombs have landed on the turf dozens of times, carving new obstacles in the form of craters.
The staff fill in and reseed the craters. They have devised a wartime turf-maintenance tool, a tractor towing strings of magnets to clear shrapnel. The owner, Yuri Sapronov, a local businessperson, has defiantly played amid the craters. But the club has not opened to the public.
The GolfStream club outside Kyiv suffered a worse fate. Wealthy members rushed to their country club when the war began, believing it would be safe. Instead, the Russian army occupied it and used the site to torture civilians, according to a report by the Media Initiative for Human Rights, a monitoring group.
Out on the Kozyn course, Oleksandr Batalov, 40, who lost a leg fighting in eastern Ukraine, knocked his ball into the No. 4 hole beside a picturesque pond. Ukrainian war amputees should be visible, at home and abroad, he said. He and a group of other amputees arrived at the course in a van painted with the slogan, “We Know the Price of Freedom.”
Batalov said he had an ambitious goal: to play a round with United States President Donald Trump. “Nothing is impossible,” he said. — ©2025 The New York Times Company
