Popasna.City chief editor about his wound: Shell fragment hit my temple and stayed there

Yaroslav Nesterenko, chief editor of Popasna.City, a media outlet relocated from Luhansk oblast, was wounded in action in July 2024, when an FPV drone exploded 6 meters away from him.

He told spoke about the incident in an interview with Ukrinform.

“It’s a miracle that I survived, because they aimed quite precisely. It was probably being jammed, or the enemy operator turned out to be inexperienced. A fragment hit my temple and stayed in my head. They cleaned the wound, but didn’t touch the fragment. But here, above the eyebrow, about two months after the injury, my forehead started swelling up. Some blood vessel failed, they inserted a tube, which I had to live with for two months,” Yaroslav said.

Yaroslav Nesterenko. Photo from Yaroslav Nesterenko's personal archive

He says that he did not faint after being wounded: he saw the blood, but did not feel any pain.

“I got into the car – the one I rescued back in March 2022, and now it rescued me… I’m driving, I feel that my right arm and leg have gone weak. The engine gave out before the checkpoint. I don’t remember why, but in the least convenient spot. I didn’t have time to start it again when a soldier drove up and started asking what happened. He wants to help me, and I was like, 'Buzz off, let me drive through!'” the media professional recalls.

He says that the soldier called an ambulance and Yaroslav fainted in the ambulance vehicle. The next day, Yaroslav Nesterenko had a surgery and was taken to Kharkiv. He had another surgery there, then he was treated in Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, where he started to get back on his legs.

As previously reported, Popasna.City and Smila.City chief editor Yaroslav Nesterenko enlisted in the Ukrainian Armed Forces in November 2023.

In his May 2022 interview with the IMI, Yaroslav Nesterenko said that he had left the city on March 8, upon realizing that he could not work there properly. Later, in August 2023, he said that in March 2022 his media outlet had run a crowdfunding campaign to hold funerals for the Popasna residents who were killed by Russian shelling.

In February 2025, Yaroslav Nesterenko resigned from the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces after being severely wounded.