Russia’s war in Ukraine left Oleksandr Vikhruk without both arms and his right leg. Maksym Radiuk lost his left arm, his eyesight and was badly burned.Now, through pain and sweat, Oleksandr, 45, works with US doctors to one day go fishing using prosthetic limbs. Maksym, 23, hopes the treatment will make him fit to join Ukraine’s national football team for the blind.As the world awaits what promises to be the first direct negotiations Thursday in Turkey between Moscow and Kyiv since the early months of the Russian invasion in 2022, the two badly injured Ukrainian soldiers being treated at an elite US military hospital outside Washington embody the tremendous cost of the war for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian servicemen and their families.”It’s very painful, very scary to see your husband maimed,” Oleksandr’s wife Olha, 50, said, choking back tears. “I couldn’t speak without tears. I couldn’t live. For three months, I didn’t speak to almost anybody, except the kids.”She added: “It’s a terrible, horrible war. I cannot describe it.”- ‘I imagined the sea’ -Oleksandr was wounded in March 2023, when his infantry unit was ambushed by Russian drones in the eastern Donetsk region. Gravely wounded, Oleksandr applied tourniquets to his arms and leg, but had to wait 10 hours to get medical help because the evacuation route was under attack by Russian forces.”When I was in a lot of pain, I simply thought about something pleasant: my home, my wife, my children,” Oleksandr, wearing a traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirt and sitting in a wheelchair in the office of United Help Ukraine, a charity that covered the families’ non-medical expenses during treatment.As hours passed, Oleksandr’s body started shivering violently and he thought back to the time when he visited Marseille in southern France.”I imagined the sea and I started feeling warm. I plunged into my dreams, that’s how I was able to endure it,” Oleksandr said in a weak voice, his eyes reflecting the traumatic memories.When he was finally taken to hospital, his arms and leg had to be amputated and he spent 2.5 months in a medical coma. Later, he also suffered a cardiac arrest and a stroke — doctors said it was a miracle he survived.Olha was devastated, but eventually seeing how Oleksandr’s eyes would light up when he saw her entering his intensive care unit gave her strength.”You begin to get used to this pain, to the idea that you must go on living, that life continues,” said Olha, a soft-spoken brunette, also clad in a Ukrainian shirt.”We fought together,” she added. “I would tell him, Sasha, you will live, I believe in you, we are together, we will get through this. And we did.”- One eye, one arm -In April 2024, Maksym’s territorial defense unit was serving in the southern Kherson region, when a Russian drone exploded near his face. It destroyed his right eye, blew off his left arm and several fingers and set him on fire.Because of the shock, Maksym initially didn’t feel any pain as he waited to be evacuated, but his legs were so badly burnt that it felt like he was wearing shorts.”I completely dissociated and just sat and waited and didn’t think about anything,” Maksym recalled, wearing sunglasses and sitting in a wheelchair.Maksym spent one and a half months in a medically induced coma after doctors amputated the remains of his arm. His wounds were so severe that his mother Natalia, 40, herself a servicewoman, was told that Maksym was unlikely to survive.When Maksym finally came to, he couldn’t see.”He woke up and he asked me: how many eyes? I told him: one,” said Natalia, adding that initially there was hope to save his left eye. “How many arms? I said: one. And legs? I said: two.”Natalia, who brims with energy, said she only allowed herself a couple of hours to cry.”I decided that I will not help my child this way, that I need to pull myself together and move forward, forward, forward,” she recalled.”I will do everything so that he can return to normal life and he will show people with arms and legs and eyes what he can do.”- ‘Rise up and scream’ -The soldiers are scheduled to spend six months to a year at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center as part of a treatment plan paid for by the US Department of Defense. Both should receive bionic limbs, and doctors have also offered to transplant one of Maxym’s toes onto his right hand.”I am very grateful that we were welcomed here in America, in this superb hospital, by superb professionals. They are great, they treat our guys very well, they treat them as heroes,” said Natalia.But with the talks scheduled in Turkey, the families hold out little hope for any fair and lasting peace deal with Moscow and called on the international community to do more to support Ukraine.”Everybody must rise up and scream that this war needs to be stopped,” she added.

Ben Cohen, co‑founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and a longtime progressive activist, told AFP he was speaking for millions of Americans outraged by the “slaughter” in Gaza after his removal from a US  Senate hearing on Wednesday.Cohen, 74, was among a group of protesters who startled Health Secretary  Robert F Kennedy Jr. by interrupting his testimony about his department’s budget proposal.Shouting that “Congress pays for bombs to kill children in Gaza” while lawmakers move to slash Medicaid — the health insurance program for low‑income families — the businessman and philanthropist was placed in handcuffs by Capitol Police.He urged senators to press Israel to let food reach “starving kids” as he was led away.”It got to a point where we had to do something,” Cohen said in an interview after his release, calling it “scandalizing” that the US approved “$20 billion worth of bombs” for Israel even as social programs are squeezed back home.”The majority of Americans hate what’s going on, what our country is doing with our money and in our name,” he said.US public opinion toward Israel has become increasingly unfavorable, especially among Democrats, according to a Pew Research Center Poll last month.Beyond the spending, Cohen framed the issue as a moral and “spiritual” breach.”Condoning and being complicit in the slaughter of tens of thousands of people strikes at the core of us as far as human beings and what our country stands for,” he said, pointing to the fact that the United States pours roughly half its discretionary budget into war‑related spending.”If you spent half of that money making lives better around the world, I think there’d be a whole lot less friction.”Invoking a parenting analogy, he added: “You go to a three-year-old who goes around hitting people and you say ‘Use your words.’ There’s issues between countries but you can work them out without killing.”A longtime critic of Israeli policy, Cohen last year joined prominent Jewish figures in an open letter opposing the pro‑Israel lobby AIPAC. “I understand that I have a higher profile than most people and so I raise my voice, it gets heard. But I need you and others to understand that I speak for millions of people who feel the same way.”Israel’s war in Gaza began after the October  7, 2023 attack by Hamas, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 52,928 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.Gaza is at “critical risk of famine,” with the entire population facing a food crisis after more than two months of an Israeli aid blockade, and 22 percent facing a humanitarian “catastrophe,” a UN-backed food security monitor warned this week.

California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday proposed eliminating free healthcare for undocumented migrants in what he said was an effort to balance a budget battered by Donald Trump’s erratic governance.The move is the latest sign of political moderation from a man believed to have White House ambitions, who is looking to soften his image among conservative voters and distance himself from a reputation as a free-spending liberal helming a state where migration is out of control.Newsom told a press conference that California should freeze admission to the public Medi-Cal program for undocumented people starting next year, and should charge those already enrolled $100 per month.”We’re not cutting or rolling back those that enrolled in our medical system. We’re just capping it, particularly for those without documentation,” he said.Almost 11 percent of the 15 million Medi-Cal recipients are undocumented, Newsom said.In March, the California state legislature reported that opening Medi-Cal to undocumented immigrants — which began in 2023 — had cost $2.7 billion more than expected in 2024.The program’s costs have also been bloated by high drug prices, including a growing demand for weight control prescriptions.- ‘Trump Slump’ -Trimming eligibility for Medi-Cal and cutting back on drug availability could save the state approximately $5.4 billion over the coming years, Newsom’s office said.He presented the idea as part of an overall plan to make up a $12 billion shortfall in California’s budget.Newsom said the state’s financial situation was due in part to the impact of President Donald Trump’s volatile tariff policies, which have walloped California, the world’s fourth largest economy, and one that is heavily exposed to international trade and tourism.The state’s revenues for the first 18 months of Trump’s presidency were expected to be $16 billion lower than they would have been without the volatility, a fall he dubbed the “Trump Slump.” Economists say the US economy as a whole is expected to take a hit from the uncertainty generated by the sudden policy lurches from the White House, with business leaders unwilling to invest and consumers increasingly wary of spending.California last month sued the Trump administration over the tariffs, saying the president did not have the ability to impose taxes on imports unilaterally, a power the lawsuit said rests only with Congress.Wednesday’s announcement dovetails with Newsom’s push to present himself as a fiscally responsible alternative to Trump, while trying to keep pace with the national mood on immigration.But he faces a tough balancing act in a state where a majority of voters support providing healthcare to undocumented migrants.”California is under assault. The United States of America, in many respects, is under assault because we have a president that’s been reckless in terms of assaulting those growth engines,” he told reporters.”It’s created a climate of deep uncertainty,” he added.”This is a Trump Slump all across the United States, reflected in adjustments by every independent economist, by leading banks, by institutions.”Local Republicans hit back Wednesday, characterizing the budget shortfall as Democratic Party overspending that disproportionately benefits migrants.”I urged the governor to immediately freeze his reckless Medi-Cal expansion for illegal immigrants a year and a half ago, before it buried our healthcare system and bankrupted the state,” state Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones said.”With a massive deficit largely driven by this policy, our focus should be on preserving Medi-Cal for those it was originally designed to serve.”Newsom’s proposal must now go to the state legislature for review. 

Ben Cohen, cofounder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and longtime progressive activist, was removed from a Senate hearing Wednesday after confronting Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and lawmakers over US support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.Kennedy had been reading prepared remarks about his department’s 2026 budget when activists interrupted the session, chanting “RFK kills people with AIDS.”Kennedy jumped from his seat in reaction to the outburst.Cohen then shouted: “Congress pays for bombs to kill children in Gaza,” accusing lawmakers of funding arms by cutting Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income families that Republicans are seeking to slash.Video posted by anti-war group Codepink showed the 74-year-old in handcuffs as Capitol Police escorted him from the chamber.”They need to let food into Gaza, they need to let food to starving kids!” Cohen yelled as he was taken away.A vocal critic of Israeli policy, Cohen last year co-signed an open letter titled A Statement From Jewish Americans Opposing AIPAC, denouncing the pro-Israel lobby’s influence in US politics.