A Ukrainian Combat Medic’s Quest to Change Fallen Soldier Tributes

[Pelican Press 0]

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A Ukrainian Combat Medic’s Quest to Change Fallen Soldier Tributes

Her ******** would be “awesome,” the young Ukrainian combat medic said, if it went as she had planned.

Mourners should wear a traditional embroidered shirt known as a vyshyvanka, the medic, Iryna Tsybukh, said in a

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to a friend outlining her wishes for her ******** if she was ******* on the front line. Soldiers could come in army fatigues. And everybody should learn 10 “meaningful” Ukrainian songs to sing around her coffin.

“Everyone will sing and learn something,” she said in her message, smiling. “In short, my ******** won’t be in vain.”

Her request proved to be prescient. Ms. Tsybukh was ******* on May 29 on the front line near the city of Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, days before her 26th birthday. Her family and her battalion have chosen to withhold the details of how she *****. At memorial and ******** ceremonies, thousands of Ukrainians in vyshyvankas and army uniforms sang her songs.

For Ms. Tsybukh, who also managed educational projects and was a journalist, the guidance she provided for her ******** was more than just personal preference. Yes, she wanted people to sing to relieve their sorrow over her ******, but also to more fundamentally change how Ukraine remembers its fallen soldiers.

So she made it her mission. She shared her views as widely as she could — in posts and stories on

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, in interviews with Ukrainian news media that were published online and in her articles. In a country grappling with the enormous toll of the war with Russia, she became a leading voice on how to commemorate the country’s war *****.

Her

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page has around 25,000 followers, and her

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regularly received tens of thousands of views. When her brother, Yurii Tsybukh, shared the news of her ****** on social media, he also shared

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to her family and friends. The post has received more 100,000 likes.

Instead of centering commemorations around the grand *******-style memorials to the war ***** that are typical in Ukraine, Ms. Tsybukh campaigned between frontline stints for what she felt was a more human approach, one that would bind the people left behind in more meaningful ways, like a daily moment of silence.

Ukrainians needed to understand, she said, that their daily lives continued because others ***** protecting them.

“When we stay alive, we unwittingly become responsible to the *****, to talk and remember what happened,” Ms. Tsybukh said in

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with Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian news outlet, just weeks before she was *******. “This is the way to be at peace with ourselves.”

A major part of that should be the government’s responsibility, she said, arguing that state institutions were ineffective at helping citizens honor soldiers and understand why they had to continue a centuries-long ****** for Ukrainian independence.

Official commemorations for Ukraine’s war ***** have been updated in recent years — most significantly in 2021, with a change of burial procedures, and in 2022, with plans for a National Military Memorial *********. But they still center on towering granite structures built across Ukraine when it was part of the ******* Union, and adorned at the time with red ******* flags.

Ms. Tsybukh called the memorials impersonal and built to celebrate the power of a totalitarian state rather than the feats of its individuals, particularly Ukrainian peasants who became an expendable resource of the ******* Army in World War II.

And that stood in stark contrast with the values that have shaped Ukraine’s ****** against Russia since 2014, Ms. Tsybukh wrote in a column for Ukrainska Pravda.

Official commemorations usually involve transporting soldiers in flag-covered coffins to central squares of Ukrainian cities and cemeteries as bands play music, in a ritual that has become all too familiar after more than two years of war.

But across the country, other ways of tribute have also sprung up — like the singing and the bonfire that honored Ms. Tsybukh. In some regions, crowds often kneel before ******** corteges, throwing flowers for deceased soldiers. Impromptu memorial services are held in many cities, with people speaking at microphones about those who *****. Some brigades celebrate the lives lost with readings of patriotic verse.

Ms. Tsybukh wanted the government to look at the different methods of commemoration being used across Ukraine and promote and institutionalize the best of them. She also took issue with government initiatives like building unknown soldier monuments for those ******* in the war with Russia, saying that the structures did not make sense given the realities of today’s conflict.

“We are different. We know everyone who ***** for Ukraine,” she said in a

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on

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. “We will surely identify all the people. That’s why no monument for an unknown soldier can exist in the Ukrainian format.”

The National Military Memorial ********* is partly modeled after Arlington National ********* in the ******* States, and the first burials are expected to take place there this fall. The ********* is set to have an unknown soldier monument whose design has yet to be decided.

“It will have an opportunity to bury soldiers for 100 years to come — including those who will return from the war and **** in old age,” said Maksym Zubov, 30, a scholar and a veteran who is in charge of figuring out of how the ********* will memorialize the fallen soldiers taken there.

One of the main focuses of Ms. Tsybukh’s campaign was a moment of silence that was instituted by the government at the beginning of the war. The practice is sporadically observed across the country; in some places, cars and people come to a stop for a minute every morning, but in other places, like Kyiv, the capital, many people do not really pay attention to it.

Weeks before her ******, Ms. Tsybukh, wearing her military uniform, gave

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in Kyiv alongside other activists to press for the expansion of the practice across the country.

A minute of silence held every day at 9 a.m., she said, would provide a meaningful way for Ukrainian civilians to commemorate the war ***** and help them understand and process their shared traumatic history.

“The highest value is freedom,” she wrote in the letter that her brother posted online. “To have freedom, you need to also hold other kinds of values. You need to understand yourself, to clearly know who you are for yourself, what your personal happiness is, and how you can reach it. Once you have the answers to this question, the most important thing is to keep going.”

Thousands of people attended two days of farewell ceremonies for Ms. Tsybukh in Kyiv and Lviv.

Her coffin was placed in the soil of a military ********* in Lviv, and people gathered around a bonfire nearby to sing and drink tea, as she had wished. Before the burial, her brother repeated his sister’s message in a clear, strong voice.

“I’ll end the way she ended her will,” he said, referring to a text message for friends posted with video instructions for her ********: “‘Kisses. I lived, loved, fought.’”

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