Visit from mom to brighten spirits of Ontario man badly wounded in Russian air strike

It’s been a traumatic five months for Oshawa’s Amanda McGill, but the agonizing wait to finally see her son, lying wounded in a hospital on the other side of the world, ends this week when she boards a Lot Airlines flight bound for Lviv, Ukraine.

The absolute worst fear for any mother is learning your child has been badly hurt and is fighting for his life thousands of miles from home. The biggest joy is learning he is on the mend and you are just days away from seeing them and giving them a big hug.

McGill experienced the nightmare first scenario last October when her son Ethan Custoza, who had signed on as a soldier to fight in the Russia-Ukraine war, was badly wounded in a drone attack on Oct. 5 while on the front lines.

This Thursday she will experience the far happier latter scenario when she flies to the war-torn country to see Ethan, now in a rehabilitation hospital in Truskavets, just south of Lviv.

“I’m nervous, of course, but I’m more excited and that trumps everything,” she said. “I’m going to see my boy and we’re going to spend some time together. We can heal together.”

“I’m going to give him the biggest hug ever.”

Custoza, who turned 24 in September while fighting in a war zone on the other side of the world, was not a professional soldier. Nor is he even Ukrainian. But in the spring of 2025, he was watching an online video of a drone strike that killed 18 civilians, including a three-year-old boy, whose death touched something deep inside the young man.

The video told a story of three-year-old Tymofii who was walking home from the playground with his grandmother when the missiles and drone fire started raining down on the streets. Tymofii was the youngest person killed that day, and his death had a profound effect on Custoza, enough to make a life-changing decision.

“Mom,” he said, after calling McGill, “I think I’ve found my purpose in life.”

Ethan Custoza

On May 1, Custoza left Oshawa for Poland and found his way to the Ukrainian border, where he was met by military personnel and taken inside the war-torn nation for training.

“Of course, as a mother, I don’t want my son to go to war,” McGill said of her son’s decision to sign up to be a soldier. “But he had such a passion for this. I told him how I felt, but I said, “If this is important to you, I will support you.”

“He had his mind made up 110 per cent. I thought it was a very brave and selfless act.”

His training lasted eight weeks and on July 7, Custoza was issued his regiment card and signed up with the assault team of Charlie Company, 2nd International Legion for the Defence of Ukraine.

Three months after he joined the fighting and almost exactly a month after his birthday, Charlie Company was hit hard and Custoza badly wounded during an assault operation on the evening of Oct. 4/5 in the Kharkiv region.

“It’s hard to say exactly what happened. But soldiers who were nearby say it was most likely a mortar shell. The nature of the damage suggests this, too,” Alex, Custoza’s commanding officer, told McGill last fall via the WhatsApp messaging service.

“A mortar shell exploded near Ethan on the left side. The entire left side of his body received multiple wounds from shrapnel. But the most serious injuries were an open fracture of the right tibia with massive bleeding, and a pneumothorax of the left lung,” Alex explained. “All of this was complicated by significant blood loss, hemorrhagic shock and contusion, but your boy was very strong, and his brothers-in-arms were nearby.”

Custoza was given immediate first aid, and the blood loss was stopped. He was then evacuated to a shelter, where he received more medical care from the legion’s combat medic. Getting him away from the lines – a harrowing and dangerous experience for all involved – followed before the Canadian arrived at the first of several hospitals for the first of more than two dozen operations.

Custoza underwent a series of surgeries to save his leg, treat his collapsed lung, remove the shrapnel in his stomach, and anywhere else they could get it out of his body.

One surgery not performed was to remove two small pieces of shrapnel close to his heart – in his pericardium, to be exact – that the medical team took as a “sign of good fortune,” Alex declared, because any closer and the young man from Oshawa would be dead.

A section of bone in his damaged leg also had to be cut out and there were also multiple muscle transplants, with fears the main nerve that goes down the leg into the foot was severed. “They won’t know that outcome until he starts rehabilitation. If that’s the case, he will not have much use of that right leg,” McGill said.

Custoza still has an open fracture of his right tibia and has a long road ahead of him with many more surgeries and a year of rehab and recovery before he can come home. Add in an unhealthy dose of PTSD and you have a mother back in Oshawa anxious to be with him.

“His mental state is horrible. He’s isolated, stuck in a bed and there’s the language barrier.”

Amanda McGill and Ethan’s father, Johannes Custoza

McGill will be accompanied for part of her month-long trip by Steve Ostafichuk, the chair of the Dnipro Oshawa Fund (who have raised more than $1.2 million for humanitarian relief in the war-torn country) and both will be attending a benefit concert on March 25 for victims and families of the Mariupol theatre bombing – an airstrike in 2022 that left as many as 600 civilians dead and has been labelled a war crime by Amnesty International and others.

Custoza is currently wearing a stabilization cage called a external fixator or Illizarov Frame, which is used to stabilize broken bones, lengthen limbs and correct deformities, with pins or wires inserted into the bone and then attached a to metal frame to hold everything in place.

McGill has been told it will be 2-3 months before the “contraption” can be removed.

It also means his leg is “still pretty fragile” and travel is not recommended so Custoza will stay put while his mother and Ostafihuk make the journey to Mariupol.

Custoza still has a long way to go and there is no guarantee doctors will be able to save his leg but there is some good news on his recovery, Mom said. “The infection in his leg is under control – thank God – and the bone is growing back. They’re just waiting for it to fuse together.”

His prognosis for when he comes home is still unknown, she added. “If everything goes well, late fall or early winter.”

“It all depends on how he heals.”

Right now, the only thing on McGill’s mind is a flight leaving Toronto on Thursday that will take her to see her son.

“Oh my god, I am so excited and he’s very much looking forward to it,” she said.

Friends of McGill launched a GoFundMe to raise money so she could see her son, with the campaign raising the needed $10,000-plus for the journey, thanks in part to a $3,500 donation from the Halenda family, who operate a chain of butcher shops with deep ties to the Ukrainian community in Oshawa, and $2,000 from Ostafichuk and the Dnipro Oshawa Fund.

Besides the cautious optimism of her son’s recovery, McGill’s new relationship with the Ukrainian diaspora in Oshawa has been the best part of the past five months.

“I feel blessed to have got together with the Ukrainian community,” said McGill, who joins her new family every Sunday on the Simcoe Street bridge over Highway 401 to fly the flag and raise awareness for their cause. “Thanks to everybody who have helped our son and our family through this tragic time,” she said. “Slava Ukraine and God bless.”