Ex-parliament speaker Parubii posthumously awarded Ukraine’s highest honor
President Volodymyr Zelensky posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine to Andrii Parubii and three other Ukrainians on Oct. 1, Ukraine's Defenders' Day.
Parubii, a 54-year-old veteran politician and key figure in the EuroMaidan Revolution, was fatally shot in Lviv on Aug. 30 by an assailant arrested a few days later. Ukrainian authorities have said they have identified a "Russian trace" in the murder.
Parubii was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine, the country’s highest state honor, for his personal contribution to the establishment of an independent Ukrainian state and his long-standing political and public service, according to a decree published on the president’s official website.
The native of western Lviv Oblast served as secretary of the National Security and Defense Council at the onset of Moscow's aggression in Donbas in 2014.
He later held the position of first deputy parliament speaker from 2014 to 2016 and parliament speaker from 2016 to 2019.
Since 2019, Parubii has served as a lawmaker for the European Solidarity party, led by former President Petro Poroshenko.
Zelensky also conferred the title on Hennadii Afanasiev, a civic activist in Russian-occupied Crimea, publicist, and soldier in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Afanasiev was killed in combat in 2022 near the village of Bilohorivka in Luhansk Oblast.
The award was also granted to Volodymyr Vakulenko, a children’s writer who was abducted and killed by Russian forces in May 2022 during the occupation of Izium in Kharkiv Oblast.
Another recipient was Stepan Chubenko, a teenage schoolboy who was tortured and executed by Russian proxy forces in partially-occupied Donetsk Oblast in 2014.
"They were special people. And they were also defenders — defenders of the idea of Ukraine, of our independence," Zelensky wrote on Telegram.
"Their lives were different, and they came from different parts of our country — Lviv, Crimea, Donetsk, Kharkiv. But for many, each of them now embodies the very Ukraine that managed to show character and stand up to Russia," Zelensky added.
The Hero of Ukraine title is the nation’s highest award, conferred for extraordinary acts of heroism or exceptional service to the state.
