The Ukrainian worker who became a hero after dying on the front | International

Seven priests, twenty soldiers, the mayor, numerous neighbors and family have fired Vladyslav Sopronchuk, a 27-year-old Ukrainian military man, on Thursday. A last goodbye in the midst of a sea of ​​flowers, incense, songs, prayers and salutes from his companions to the sky of the Novograd-Volinski cemetery, a town in the Yitómir region, west of kyiv. A funeral in style for a working man by profession and patriot by conviction.

Sopronchuk had just come of age when, between 2013 and 2014, kyiv hosted the demonstrations of the Maidan (square, in Ukrainian) revolution. Ukraine wanted to get rid of the corset that Moscow wanted to impose on it. But that same year Russia illegally occupied the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and in the east, in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, the war pitted local troops against pro-Russian militiamen. Sopronchuk went there to fight for a year and a half after quitting his construction job.

That conflict, remotely controlled directly from the Kremlin, has continued until Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Since then, the tentacles of war have spread like an oil slick beyond the east and reach, directly or indirectly, the entire former Soviet republic, where the burials take place.

The worker from Novograd-Volinsky wasted no time enlisting when he saw the invader arrive this year and went back to the front. In April he was injured and during his hospitalization his father died of a heart attack, says a city official who is attending the family at the funeral. Once discharged, he went back to wearing the camouflage uniform. Vladyslav Sopronchuk finally met his death on August 24 while fighting in the outskirts of the town of Sloviansk, in the Donetsk region.

Although thousands have already died in recent months, Ukraine does not give official figures of its victims in the war unleashed since the February invasion, although General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi commented on August 22, at the edge of six months of conflict , which are about 9,000 losses in the field of combat. However, the figure of more than 50,000 dead Kremlin soldiers offered by the kyiv authorities is considered an exaggeration that seeks to amplify their achievements on the battlefield. Great Britain calculates that they are half and the USA about 20,000.

Of course, Ukraine says goodbye to its fallen in the best possible way and without hiding ceremonies that are not lavished on the other side of the border. The funeral and burial of Sopronchuk is an example of this. Dozens of people carrying bouquets of flowers surround the deceased and his family in a circle while the mayor of the town, Mikola Borovets, glosses the figure of the deceased. The cries of Galina, the mother, and Darya, the widow, who caress the coffin covered with the national banner, focus the attention of all those present in the courtyard of the church of San Miguel. Shortly after, the procession sets out on its way to the cemetery. There, to the rhythm of the funeral trumpet and drum, the companions hoist the body back on their shoulders.

“It was his own decision and now we have lost him. He was a good person. Since 2014 he decided to go with the Army where other young people do not want to go. This year, likewise, my son made the decision to go, as his grandfather and his father did in the past, ”Galina tells EL PAÍS. “No one can speak ill of him. I’m not saying this because I’m his mother. Everyone thinks the same.”

A line of 13 other Novograd-Volinski fighters who have fallen since February 24 precedes the grave where Sopronchuk’s coffin is laid. Some of those present throw earth on the coffin in the middle of a sea of ​​tears and cries. Minutes later, in the colorful cemetery full of flowers and adorned with flags, only Lidia remains, a 76-year-old woman who, shovel in hand, helps her son finish filling the hole where the last local hero rests with earth. . At home she waits for Darya, her daughter Eva, the three-year-old girl she had with Vladyslav.

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