Kyiv surgeons have given a Ukrainian soldier who survived Russian captivity a new heart — after doctors discovered his own was functioning at just 10% following his return home, Health Minister Viktor Liashko announced. Yurii Mykytenchuk from Zhytomyr Oblast joined the armed forces in 2022, spent almost two years in Russian detention across three facilities, and returned home carrying damage to his heart that nearly killed him months after his release.
From captivity to cardiac arrest
Mykytenchuk was captured in autumn 2023. Russian forces held him first in occupied Horlivka, then in Toretsk, before transferring him to Russia's Altai region. The worst was in Horlivka — beatings upon arrival, electric shocks, and baton strikes. In Altai, the torture was compounded by constant hunger and cold, TSN reported.
When he finally returned to Ukraine, doctors at Kyiv's Center for Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery examined him and found something alarming: his heart was operating at only 10% capacity. They suspected he had suffered a heart attack during Russian detention — an attack no one treated at the time.
- Yurii Mykytenchuk (left) during a prisoner exchange, 12 June 2025. Photo: Tetiana Mykytenchuk/Suspilne Zhytomyr
On 4 February 2026, Mykytenchuk's heart stopped entirely. Doctors connected him to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) — a device that takes over the functions of both heart and lungs — and kept him alive on it for more than a month. Without a transplant, there was no way forward.
New heart, new birthday
Two weeks before his 45th birthday, a donor appeared: a 43-year-old man who had died of a stroke. Surgeons at the cardiology center successfully performed the transplant. Mykytenchuk celebrated his birthday with his wife, Tetiana, and their daughter and son.
"Today my heart is full of gratitude and faith," Tetiana wrote after the operation. "My husband went through trials that not everyone can endure. Captivity, pain, uncertainty — and then another difficult battle, a heart transplant. So many trials that sometimes it seemed beyond human endurance. But he held on. He is fighting now — for life, for every new day, for the future."
Mykytenchuk is now in rehabilitation.
