KYIV, Ukraine — Oleksandr Budko looks like a leading man. He's sandy-haired and blue-eyed, with muscular tattooed arms and the chiseled face of a movie star.
"I'm a military veteran, an activist and writer. And I'm also The Bachelor," he says in this season's Ukrainian edition of the popular reality TV franchise.
The Bachelor, or Kholostiak in Ukrainian, is produced by Starlight Media and Warner Bros. International Television, and it airs on STB, a Ukrainian channel. This season, its 13th, premiered on Nov. 1.
In one episode, Budko is on a rock-climbing date with a wholesome translator named Inna Bielien.
"Oh my God," she says, as she hangs off the cliff.
"Don't worry, I will be very close, right behind you," he says, as he helps her scale the rock face.
What goes unsaid is that Budko is doing this on prosthetic legs, clearly visible because he's wearing shorts. He's a double amputee. He represents the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who have lost limbs since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. An adviser to Ukraine's Sports and Youth Ministry put the number at around 100,000 last year.
Their visibility — in fashion magazines, on catwalks and now a popular reality TV series — shows how much the war has affected Ukraine.
"Still," he tells NPR in an interview, "there is still a problem with stigma. I went on The Bachelor to help address it."
"I realized then I would lose my legs"
Budko, 28, grew up in western Ukraine and was working as a barista in a coffeeshop in Kyiv when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He enlisted and was soon on the front line. That summer, his unit had stalled while trying to push Russian troops out of northeastern Ukraine. During a lull in the fighting, the unit decided to rest. Budko lay down in a trench.
"Then something hit that caused the trench to crumble," he says.
Russian troops had shelled the trench. Budko was buried in earth, twisting in pain as his fellow soldiers dug him out.
"I was conscious the entire time," he says. "And I also realized then that I would lose my legs."
Budko recovered through intensive, and often excruciating, physical therapy. He threw himself into sports, even competing in swimming at the 2023 Invictus Games. He also wrote a book and performed in a modern ballet.
"There was no point in me being angry at anyone or anything about what happened," he said. "It was better to do something good instead."
In the opening to The Bachelor, he jumps on a motorcycle, tucks a red rose into his leather vest-jacket, and speeds away. Each episode features beautiful young women vying for his attention, often with the built-in melodrama typical of reality shows.
"I wanted to show the possibilities," he says. "I wanted to give people faith."
"You are examples of courage and heroism"
The people he's talking about are fellow wounded veterans. Budko visits them often, and they're a tough crowd — exhausted, skeptical, emotionally distant.
"They never allow themselves to show any feelings of failure," he says.
On a recent afternoon, he stops by a hospital in Kyiv where dozens of veterans are recovering from amputations. He cringes when he hears their screams of pain during physical therapy.
Budko walks into a room filled with wounded soldiers in wheelchairs and sitting on beds. He introduces himself with his military call sign, Teren. It's the name of a thorny wild plum. In Ukrainian folklore, it symbolizes obstacles and overcoming them.
"Do not focus only on your injury, because remember — you are examples of courage and heroism," he tells the soldiers. "You are not disabled."
Rostyslav Andrusenko, a doctor helping the men recover, says many are depressed. They fear they will no longer be useful to their families or society.
"They ask me if they will ever walk again or play football with their friends or help their kids, all the everyday things that they did before," Andrusenko says.
Budko gives a pep talk to the soldiers and also cracks a few jokes that don't quite land. The men politely clap when he finishes and then ask a lot of practical questions, like where to get the best prosthetics.
Mykola Kovalenko, a married father of two, badly injured his leg on the front line after a mine exploded and may have to have it amputated. He asks Budko how to navigate medical bureaucracy, which he equates to "passing through the seven circles of hell."
Budko promises to help, and Kovalenko finally cracks a smile. He says his wife and two teenage daughters love this season of The Bachelor.
"What he is doing is very helpful," Kovalenko says. "He is showing guys like me, guys who are injured, that all is not lost, that we shouldn't give up, that we should keep trying."
Budko says soldiers rarely discuss their feelings about relationships and self-image with him. He does offer his number, though, in case they do want to talk at some point.
"Everyone has their own sensitive topics that they're ashamed to talk about," he says, including intimacy and the fear of being pitied by potential partners.
Love and war
The war has also touched the women on the show. One is a widow whose husband was killed on the front line. Another is a soldier. Inna Bielien, the translator on the rock-climbing date, is also a humanitarian volunteer who sources and sends supplies to Ukraine's troops.
NPR meets her in her stylish apartment in a Kyiv neighborhood that's often hit by Russian drones. She talks about a soldier, Vadym, she loved who was killed early in the war. She says she was still holding out hope when she got the call about him.
"I remember thinking, Lord, I hope he's alive, even with no arms and no legs, because it is better to come back without limbs than not come back at all," she says.
Even so, she says, many Ukrainians struggle to talk to wounded veterans.
"I was told that if you see a soldier, you say thank you and put your hand to your heart," Bielien says. "Asking about amputations, whether that crosses personal boundaries, that is still new for us."
Budko says the series helped show that it's OK to ask questions, especially when it comes to intimacy.
"Like, 'Does it hurt when I touch your limbs there?' and so on," he says.
Budko says he feels he has done some good on the show. And he now has a girlfriend, but won't say if it's Bielien, who says she fell in love with him, or someone else.
He can't reveal anything, he says, until the season finale on Friday.
Copyright 2024 NPR
