内容摘要：“I am surprised that (my body) preserved so well,” he said. “I am very lucky.”

“I am surprised that (my body) preserved so well,” he said. “I am very lucky.”

It is this dire situation that has driven wounded soldiers back to the front, where little has changed since they first left their civilian lives to defend their families from an invading neighbor.For them, lying in a hospital bed was unbearable compared to standing alongside their brothers-in-arms to defend Ukraine. But they all agree on one thing — when the war ends, they won’t spend another day in uniform; joining the army was never their first choice.

Andrii Serhieiev, right, a soldier with Ukraine’s 53rd Brigade who lost a leg in combat, and another soldier install explosives near the front line in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Feb. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)Andrii Serhieiev, right, a soldier with Ukraine’s 53rd Brigade who lost a leg in combat, and another soldier install explosives near the front line in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Feb. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)Rubliuk rejoined the special forces last spring as a senior sergeant in the Artan intelligence unit, training new soldiers and monitoring enemy drones. His rehabilitation began in late 2022, but he believes it never truly ends.

Andrii Rubliuk, a senior sergeant with a Ukrainian intelligence unit who lost both arms and a leg in combat, looks at a tablet during military training near Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)Andrii Rubliuk, a senior sergeant with a Ukrainian intelligence unit who lost both arms and a leg in combat, looks at a tablet during military training near Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

“Every new day is part of my rehabilitation,” he says. His new body, he adds, is a balance between self-acceptance and continuous recovery.

A comrade who was with Rubliuk when the explosion happened and suffered minor injuries, remembers the moment vividly. “I thought he was dead,” said the soldier who did not give his name in compliance with special forces rules.Sometimes, when the wind is blowing, the acrid smell of the slaughterhouse signals the town’s biggest employer. The meatpacking facility with more than 3,700 workers is owned by JBS, the world’s largest beef producer.

The loss of immigrant labor would be a blow to the industry.“We’re going to be back in this situation of constant turnover,” said Mark Lauritsen, who runs the meatpacking division for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents thousands of Panhandle workers. “That’s assuming you have labor to replace the labor we’re losing.”

Nearly half of workers in the meatpacking industry are thought to be foreign-born. Immigrants have long found work in slaughterhouses, back to at least the late 1800s when multitudes of Europeans — Lithuanians, Sicilians, Russian Jews and others — filled Chicago’s Packingtown neighborhood.The Panhandle plants were originally dominated by Mexicans and Central Americans. They gave way to waves of people fleeing poverty and violence around the world, from