Funeral held for activist killed in battle
Remembered as ‘a symbol of a new Ukraine’
KYIV, Ukraine – Poppies, the bloodred flowers that cover the battlefields of Europe’s two world wars, were lain in mourning Saturday on the coffin of yet another dead soldier, this one killed in yet another European war, in Ukraine.
The hundreds of mourners for Roman Ratushnyi, 24, included friends who had protested with him during months of demonstrations that toppled Ukraine’s pro-Russia 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 Ukraine’s post-independence generations that are sacrificing their best years in the cause of freedom. First, with defiance and dozens of lives against brutal riot police during Ukraine’s Maidan protests of 2013-2014, and now with weapons and even more lives against Russian troops.
“Heroes never die!” friends, family and admirers shouted in Ukrainian as Ratushnyi’s coffin was loaded aboard a hearse on a square in the Ukrainian capital now decorated with destroyed Russian tanks and vehicles. Their charred hulks contrasted with the shiny gold domes of an adjacent cathedral where priests had earlier sung prayers for Ratushnyi, who was well-known in Kyiv for civic and environmental activism.
From the square, hundreds of mourners walked in a silent column behind his coffin to Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square. The vast plaza in central Kyiv gave its name to the three months of protests that overthrew then President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 and which helped fuel the political and patriotic awakening of Ukrainians born after independence in 1991.
Ratushnyi had “a heart full of love for Ukraine,” said Misha Reva, who traveled in his soldier’s uniform from the war’s front lines by overnight train to say goodbye to the friend he met for the first time on Maidan, in the midst of the protests. Ratushnyi was then just 16; Reva was in his early 20s. It was Ratushnyi who introduced Reva to the woman who is now his wife, also on the square.
While the funeral was underway in central Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a trip south to visit troops defending the front line in the Mykolaiv region. He handed out awards to men and women in camouflage, shaking their hands.
“I thank each and every one of you, for the great work, for the great service, for what you do protecting our country, each of us, our families,” Zelenskyy said in what appeared to be the basement of a building.
He also visited the city of Mykolaiv, on the Black Sea coast, where he met with the governor and went to see the ruins of the administration building, which was destroyed by Russian shelling in April that killed at least 34 people.
In other developments Saturday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressed concerns “that a bit of Ukraine fatigue is starting to set in around the world” and said Ukraine must be supported in trying to roll back the Russian invasion to “make sure the Ukrainians are not encouraged to go for a bad peace, something that simply wouldn’t endure.”
“It would be a catastrophe if Putin won. He’d love nothing more than to say, ‘Let’s freeze this conflict, let’s have a cease-fire,’ ” Johnson said. “For him that would be a tremendous victory. You’d have a situation in which Putin was able to consolidate his gains and then to launch another attack.”
Johnson spoke on his return from a surprise trip Friday to Kyiv, where he met with Zelenskyy to offer continued aid and military training.