Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – Poppies, the blood-red flowers that blanket the battlefields of the two world wars in Europe, were laid in mourning on Saturday on the coffin of another dead soldier killed in another European war in Ukraine.
Among the hundreds of mourners for 24-year-old Roman Ratushnyi were friends who had protested with him during the months-long demonstrations that toppled Ukraine’s pro-Russian leader in 2014, and who like him took up arms when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor this February.
The arc of his shortened life symbolized that of post-independence Ukrainian generations sacrificing their prime for the cause of freedom. First with defiance and dozens of lives against brutal riot police during Ukraine’s 2013-2014 Maidan protests, and now with guns and even more lives against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops.
“Heroes never die!” Friends, family and admirers shouted in Ukrainian as Ratushnyi’s coffin was loaded into a hearse in a square in the Ukrainian capital now adorned with wrecked Russian tanks and vehicles. Their charred wrecks contrasted with the gleaming golden domes of an adjacent cathedral, where priests had previously chanted prayers for Ratushnyi, known in Kyiv for his civic and environmental activism.
From the square, the mourners then walked in a long, silent column behind his coffin to Maidan Nezalezhnosti, Independence Square. The huge square in central Kyiv gave its name to the three-month-long protests that led to the 2014 ouster of then-President Viktor Yanukovych and which helped fuel the political and patriotic awakening of post-independence Ukrainians in 1991.
Ratushnyi has “a heart full of love for Ukraine,” said Misha Reva, who arrived overnight from the eastern front in his soldier’s uniform to say goodbye to the friend he first met amid the Maidan protests had met . Ratushnyi was just 16 at the time; Reva was in his early 20s. It was Ratushnyi who introduced Reva to the woman who is now his wife, also on the pitch.
While the funeral was taking place in central Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled south to visit troops defending the front in the Mykolaiv region. He presented awards to men and women in camouflage clothing and shook hands with them.
“I thank each and every one of you for the great work, for the great service, for what you are doing to protect our country, each of us, our families,” Zelenskyy said in the basement of a building.
He also visited the city of Mykolayiv on the Black Sea coast, where he met with the governor and viewed the ruins of the administrative building destroyed by Russian shelling in April that killed at least 34 people.
In other developments, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Saturday expressed concern “that a little bit of Ukraine fatigue is setting in around the world” and said Ukraine must be helped as it tries to roll back the Russian invasion to “ensure that Ukrainians not doing so encourages the pursuit of a bad peace, something that simply would not last.”
“It would be catastrophic if Putin won. He would love nothing more than to say, “Let’s freeze this conflict, let’s have a truce,” Johnson said. “It would be a huge win for him. You would have a situation where Putin could consolidate his gains and then launch another attack.”
Johnson spoke of his return from a surprise trip to Kyiv on Friday, where he met with Zelenskyy to offer further assistance and military training.
Western-supplied heavy weapons are reaching the front lines, though not in quantities Ukrainian officials say are needed to push back Russian forces to positions they held before or after the invasion. The Associated Press was granted rare access to the firing of US-supplied M777 howitzers at Russian positions in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region on Saturday. The powerful artillery pieces help the Ukrainian forces to respond in kind to the Russian batteries that have reduced towns and villages to rubble.
In Kiew. The bells of St. Michael’s Cathedral rang as four soldiers carried Ratushnyi’s coffin to Saturday morning’s memorial service, held outdoors in the church’s sunlit courtyard. Poppies and a traditional loaf of bread were placed on the coffin, which was covered with the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine.
During the Maidan protests, during which riot police used batons and eventually bullets with deadly abandon, Ratushnyi and Reva had taken shelter together on the cathedral grounds for a night, the friend recalled.
“He was such a solid and big personality,” Reva said. “This is a great loss for Ukraine.”
The friends then volunteered to fight on the very first day of the Russian invasion on February 24th. After participating in the defense of Kyiv during the first weeks of the attack, Ratushnyi joined an army brigade and did military intelligence work, Reva said. Reva said he had been fighting in positions outside of where Ratushnyi was killed lately. Reva, 33, said two soldiers were killed and 15 injured on Thursday where he was stationed.
“Every day people are killed on the front lines,” he said.
Ratushnyi was killed on June 9 near the town of Izyum on the eastern front of the war, according to the environmental campaign group he headed in Kyiv. He fought to save a wooded park where people ski in winter.
“He was a symbol, a symbol of a new Ukraine, of freedom and a new generation that wants to fight for their rights,” said Serhli Sasyn, 21.
The “best people are dying now”.
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Efrem Lukatsky in the Donbass region of Ukraine and Inna Varenytsia in Lisbon, Portugal contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine