CZELADZ, Poland—Oleksandr Karpets, a marksman from Ukraine’s 80th Air Assault Brigade, remembers the bone-crushing pressure on his face when shrapnel from a Russian tank artillery round shaved off his lower jaw, leaving him on the ground gasping for breath as his comrades radioed base thinking he was dead.
“I was on the position that happened to be first in the line of fire,” the 35-year-old says.
