Vasyl, a 28-year-old lieutenant and paratrooper who joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces as a 20-year-old in 2014, was killed by Russian forces on the southern front in Mykolaiv on March 3. The fighting was so intense there that it took days for the army to recover his body and evacuate it to Duliby, said Josef, a longtime family friend with a Cossack haircut. . Vasyl’s coffin arrived sealed. He was buried in a similar ceremony on March 9.
On March 13, Kyrylo, 35, died in the middle of a russian missile barrage which hit the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security in Yavoriv, a town 16 kilometers from the border with Poland that had hosted US troops until last month.
After three weeks of heavy fighting, Russia full-scale invasion of Ukraine intensified and spread across the country in recent days, with missiles and artillery pounding airports, military targets and residential areas. Almost ago no region, nor city, nor village, which was not touched by the war of Vladimir Putin against Ukraine, the most important in Europe since the Second World War. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that more than 1,300 of his soldiers had been killed so far.
Although there is still no end in sight, Zelensky said on Wednesday morning that negotiations with Moscow were starting to “seem more realistic”.
“However, time is still needed for decisions to be in Ukraine’s interest,” he added.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that parts of a possible peace deal were close to being reached with Kyiv after saying he would discuss “neutrality”.
Kyrylo’s funeral began Tuesday morning in Lviv, where his body and the bodies of three other soldiers – Oleh Yashchyshyn, Rostyslav Romanchuk and Serhiy Melnyk – were brought in polished wooden coffins to the baroque Garrison Church of Saints Peter and Paul.
Hundreds of mourners who gathered there to pay their respects took turns approaching the coffins, touching them and placing large bouquets of flowers on them. Many made the sign of the cross, looked up and mumbled prayers in low voices. Mothers hugged the boxes containing their boys while the priests sprinkled them with holy water.
