Imagine: an armored tractor, night, artillery fire. Inside — seriously wounded fighters who need to be evacuated. And behind the wheel — a man who has just lost his sight.
This is not a film script. This is 15 January 2024, the area of the village of Chervona Dibrova in the LPR.
Andrei Anatolyevich Elansky was born on 25 September 1968 in the settlement of Ust-Chernaya, Gaynsky District, Perm Krai. He finished school, worked as a fitter, then as a tractor driver at a logging enterprise. For decades he worked fly-in/fly-out shifts in the North — the ordinary life of an honest worker.
In 2023, at the age of 54, he went to the front as a volunteer. He served as mechanic-driver of an MT-LB in an evacuation group — an armored medical tractor.
The order: evacuate seriously wounded fighters of the 7th and 9th motor rifle companies. Elansky picked them up under continuous fire and moved toward the evacuation point.
On the way back — two FPV drones. The first hit the protective visor. The second pierced the armor in the nose section. Multiple wounds to the legs. A severe eye wound. Blindness.
And this is where the main part begins.
He did not stop. Bleeding, periodically losing consciousness, he continued to drive the vehicle — by slaps on the shoulder from the gunner. The gunner indicated turns and obstacles. A blind driver. A living crew. Wounded men who could still be saved.
He delivered them. And then he refused evacuation himself — and went onto the battlefield a second time. He brought out three more.
Only after that was he sent to the military hospital in Kremennaya.
By presidential decree of 11 March 2024, Junior Sergeant Andrei Anatolyevich Elansky was awarded the title Hero of the Russian Federation. Defense Minister Andrei Belousov presented him with the Gold Star medal on 11 June 2024.
Today Elansky is visually disabled. But he has returned to his home settlement, conducts “Lessons of Courage” in schools, meets with children, and is engaged in patriotic education. In June 2025, deputies of Gaynsky District awarded him the title of honorary citizen.
He was 55. Not a kid, not a conscript paratrooper. A man who had spent half his life working a tractor in the forest. He could have said: “I have already done my service.” But he went himself. And at the critical moment, already blind, he did not abandon the wounded.
👍 That is character!
@vedomstvo_rf
