The death of Roman Ratushnyi, 24, a prominent environmental campaigner who died while fighting the Russians, has come to symbolise the war’s heavy toll on society
There are funerals every day in Kyiv, but this one felt particularly poignant. Hundreds of friends and fellow activists, clad in Ukrainian flags, gathered on Saturday to pay tribute to Roman Ratushnyi, a prominent political and environmental campaigner who was recently killed fighting near Ukraine’s second-biggest city, Kharkiv.
After Maidan, Ratushnyi worked as an investigative journalist, exposing local corruption. But he is best known in Kyiv for leading a campaign in 2019 to protect Protasiv Yar, a green area in central Kyiv that developers wanted to take over. It was near Protasiv Yar that mourners gathered last week. Thousands of young Ukrainians, who have only ever known an independent Ukraine, volunteered to join the army and its territorial defence forces when RussiaAnd while the country has been successful in repelling Russian forces, it is now suffering some of its heaviest losses since the start of the war as the battle for the east of the country enters its decisive stages.
Valya Polishchuk, a photographer from Kyiv, said that her days now are “filled with going from funeral to funeral”. “I was at the funeral of another friend when I heard about Roman,” she shrugged, before kneeling as the car passed carrying Ratushnyi’s body. Russia last announced its official death toll in late March, but independent Russian media have been keeping their own tally of Russian casualties, illustrating the fact that poorer, more remote regions have been disproportionately affected by the war., only eight soldiers from Moscow have died so far in Ukraine and 26 from the second-largest city, St Petersburg.
Masi Nayyem, 37, a prominent Ukrainian lawyer-turned-soldier, said the war will harden Ukraine’s new generation for many decades to come. “It is just not Roman who has died, but also part of Ukraine’s future. This will leave a footprint on his friends.”from a hospital in Dnipro, where he was recovering from serious head injuries inflicted while fighting earlier this month, blinding him in one eye.
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