NIZHYN, Ukraine: A Ukrainian soldier who was posthumously awarded a medal after a widely shared video showed him declaring “Glory to Ukraine” before he was apparently shot was commemorated with a statue in his northern hometown on Saturday.
A video shared in March showed a man later identified by the military as Oleksandr Matsievskiy, a sniper with a unit from the Chernihiv region, saying “Slava Ukraini,” a more than century-old phrase that has become a popular expression of opposition to Russia. Invasion in February 2022.
Standing smoking a cigarette in a wooded area, carrying no visible weapon, Matsievskij is then seen collapsing to the ground, apparently hit repeatedly by unseen gunmen.
Kyiv blamed “brutal and insolent” Russians for his death, as did his mother Paraska Demchuk (68).
“He would have taken them all with him if he had a grenade,” she said as she proudly displayed the medal President Volodymyr Zelenskiy awarded her son, representing the “Hero of Ukraine” honor.
“He told me, ‘Mom, I’ll never let them take me,'” she said through tears. “He wouldn’t just swear. It was inside, it was like a core of him,” she said.
Kyiv launched a criminal investigation into the death of Matsievsky, who was quickly hailed as a hero on social media, where many supporters posted the words “Heroyam Slava” or “Glory to heroes”, a traditional response to Slava Ukraini.
