Editor’s Note: The following is the first in a series of reports by the Kyiv Independent about the memorialization of Ukraine’s fallen soldiers.
“I'm up for cremation,” Kostiantyn “Kostia” Yuzviuk wrote in a list of funeral requests in his newly created Telegram channel for friends in November 2022 – months before he volunteered to the Ukrainian army.
“I wouldn’t like to occupy the territory for no reason with my coffin. Besides, one day there will be another war, and it will be difficult for our guys to dig trenches in our bones,” he wrote in case his family would have to face his death.
Yuzviuk chose to do what he believed was right during the full-scale Russian invasion. Between fundraisers for the war effort, he helped host educational youth camps and drove to the front line with other volunteers to deliver aid and rescue abandoned animals.
And then, in May 2023, he enlisted in the army.
Just over a year later, in July, 23-year-old Kostia Yuzviuk was mortally wounded at the front line.
At the hospital where he died, his mother, Olha Yuzviuk, and girlfriend, Sasha, vowed to do Kostia’s funeral precisely as he designed – his last gift to everyone who knew him, inviting people to laugh, cry, and affirm the values he stood for.
Asking to throw away his cremated ashes and exclude any religious rites, Yuzviuk eliminated a major part of a traditional Ukrainian burial, clearing the way for a uniquely personal ceremony in which hundreds of people honored him by what his mother called “either a farewell or a concert.”
As became custom for burials of Ukraine’s fallen soldiers, people kneeled along the road as his body was driven for the farewell to his native city Rivne’s central square, in a motorcade. That’s where the traditional part ended.
Instead of the funeral prayers, people recited patriotic verses at Yuzviuk’s farewell. Instead of putting his body to the ground, his family cremated him. Cremation is uncustomary in most of Ukraine, to the point that there are only three crematoriums in the country.
After cremation, Yuzviuk’s ashes are being given to his friends to scatter them in beautiful places he wanted to travel.
It was one of the latest in a flurry of memorialization ceremonies for Ukrainian soldiers that celebrate their lives rather than mourn their deaths, often per their request, as they break with the Soviet and religious traditions to leave a more personal mark on the country’s future.
One of the bright, young Ukrainians who stood protesting at EuroMaidan when he was 13, Kostia Yuzviuk couldn’t choose when he would die, but he and other fighters have chosen how they should be remembered. And with that, they make an impact on the Ukrainians' future after they die fighting for it.
A farewell for Kostia
"This farewell, from the first to the last second, was unlike everyone else's," Kostia Yuzviuk’s mother Olha Yuzviuk told the Kyiv Independent days after her son was cremated. “Even with this act, he turned (people’s) perception upside down.”
Three weeks before Kostia Yuzviuk’s death, his 22-year-old cousin's burned remains were buried following his death on the front in February and a months-long identification process. His funeral went in accordance with the standard military ritual, legally adopted in 2021 after years of development. Before that, Ukrainian soldiers were often buried in the much shorter and impersonal ceremony rooted in the Soviet Union.
“All the military honors of the Soviet burial came down to the fact that the soldiers carried the coffin and then saluted with three shots into the sky,” said Maksym Zubov, a veteran and memorial expert working at the National Military Memorial cemetery in Ukraine.
The new ritual, expanded to demonstrate the state’s honoring of the soldier and their family, has become a grim routine throughout Ukraine in the past 2.5 years.
Farewells at home, followed by religious and military ceremonies at churches and main city squares, conclude with the burial at a cemetery. Ukrainians have added their own traditions to cope with the grief and pay tribute to fallen soldiers, like a long communal walk to the cemetery through the city center of Lviv and people kneeling along the road to honor the funeral cortege, which is now common practice, especially in the west and center of Ukraine.
On July 21, hundreds kneeled to honor Yuzviuk’s at the main square of his native Rivne. There were no Christian rites upon his request. There were also no speeches from authorities to honor his years-long activism protesting against political imprisonments and violent treatment of animals – “fighting the system,” his mother Olha Yuzviuk said.
“We just asked that it be a family farewell without political or religious undertones,” Olha added.
As a military birthday tradition, men at the funeral did twenty-three push-ups for the years Kostia had been alive. His comrades shouted verses of a patriotic “Prayer of a Ukrainian Nationalist.”
Addressing Ukraine as “holy mother of heroes,” they asked for faith and strength to avenge the deaths of her patriots.
Kostia Yuzviuk’s father, a newly volunteered soldier in his uniform, recited an anonymous poem, “Call to the Ancestors,” that Olha Yuzviuk found online years ago and printed to hang in their home.
“I stand on my land and appeal to all of my kin!” he called, adding: “Help me to survive and win this battle!”
But before that, Olha read Kostia’s farewell letter, and his words filled the square over the loudspeaker.
People couldn’t help laughing through tears. As a vegan, Kostia wanted friends to make a few memes like “he died because he didn't eat meat.” “My family would appreciate it,” he wrote.
He wanted a costume party with “cool” Ukrainian music instead of a wake, where everyone should wear glitter on their faces as they look through the photos and videos with him. He named friends who could take pictures of the event and asked attendees to send them small donations. At the end of it, Kostia wanted his friends to do a fundraiser.
“Make a tearful post (on social media) about my death,” he asked, encouraging them to use the opportunity to collect money for medical battalions and volunteer organizations he cared for.
They did as he asked. In the three weeks since his death, almost Hr 1 million ($24,300) was raised through the efforts of dozens of people in Kostia’s memory for a medical evacuation car to be named “Stambul” (Ukrainian for Istanbul) after his callsign and for battlefield drones.
“Kostia, you are everywhere, and your deeds, your will is living in the deeds of your people,” wrote his friend Marta Plechiy in her Instagram post which helped her raise almost $2,000 thousand for the evacuation car.
“If you want to come and spend time with me,” Kostia wrote, referring to the time when he would be dead and cremated, “take white kvass and go somewhere to the shore, a mountain, or sunset and you can talk alone.”
“I’ll be listening to you with kvass,” Kostia’s mother said through the microphone, reading her son’s words, as people at the funeral clutched their “Kvass Taras” bottles. It was his favorite soft drink. In the days after his funeral, it was sold out in Rivne supermarkets. Local soldiers can still be seen regularly drinking it, Olha said days after the funeral.
“There will be no quotes or teachings from me,” Kostia wrote, finishing his last words. “Because I am nobody, but it would be cool if you went to (educational) camps to rebuild Ukraine, held cultural events, gathered together, traveled, tried something new, and accepted the challenges.”
“So I thank everyone who was and is with me. I would fight for each and every one of you,” Olha concluded, quoting Kostia’s final message.
Grown military men at the funeral wept, stricken by the farewell letter of a young man they knew as a little boy, she said later. At least ten soldiers, friends of the family, called over the next few days to ask Olha about how to arrange the cremation in case they got killed.
It’s uncommon for Ukrainian fighters to leave instructions regarding their funeral and the last will. They don’t typically want to talk of death, military psychologists say, except by means of morbid jokes that are flourishing in the army.
But at times, after a close call on the front or the death of a comrade, people opt to leave a farewell message for their loved ones in case they get killed, said Andrii Kozinchuk, a military psychologist in a unit.
“It’s not a will about who you leave your property to,” he told the Kyiv Independent.
“It is usually an order like ‘you must live happily after my death’ for the family.”
And for a soldier’s mental health, writing the last will is a good practice, Kozinchuk said.
“If you care about your death, chances are you care about your life,” he added.
After the farewell
News of Yuzviuk’s death, his unique funeral, and his last message were reported in the media and widely shared by his friends and strangers alike.
His farewell ceremony felt profoundly personal, touching people across Ukraine. It added to a flurry of non-standard funerals of other young activists who are making a mark even after getting killed on the frontline, including activists Roman Ratushny and Pavlo Petrychenko, commander Dmytro Kotsiubailo, poet Maksym Kryvtsov and combat medic and memorialization activist Iryna Tsybukh.
Their funerals have compelled more people to perform military honors with a personal touch, like lighting colored smoke flares, as Ukrainian activists often do during protests, quoting the activists, reading Kryvtsov’s new poetry book, wearing Ukrainian embroidered clothes, and singing Ukrainian songs, as Tsybukh asked in her posthumous letter.
Two days after the farewell in Rivne, the Yuzviuk family and a crowd of Kostia’s friends sat in the park in Kyiv for a few hours, playing the guitar and talking as they waited for his cremation to be finished. The body had to be taken to Kyiv, the closest city that has a crematorium.
“It felt like Kostia was somewhere nearby, waiting to jump out on them and ask: ‘What the hell are you guys doing here?’” his mother Olha recalled.
There, Kostia’s friends told her countless stories of the good things he did for the others that she never heard before.
"We did not say goodbye to him with a heavy heart. We just let him go to the sky, onto the cloud,” she said.
Kostia wanted his remains to be thrown away without any fanfare but allowed his loved ones to “think something up” about using them, like making a piece of jewelry with his ashes. They chose to divide the ashes, put them in small tubes, and give them to his friends to scatter.
“Since he loved to travel, he will be divided into small tubes.” his mother Olha said, referring to Kostia’s remains. “Volunteers are already lining up to scatter his ashes in the world's best places.”
When it was over, Olha stepped outside the crematorium, hugging the urn with Kostia’s ashes.
Moments later, she felt warmth as Kostia’s friends embraced her in a group hug. Together they laughed, cried, posed for a group photo with their arms shaped like a big heart around the urn, and joked that Kostia looks better than ever with his beard gone.
"We were driving home as if we were beatified,” Olha said. "You don't have a child anymore, but you go on with the purpose – to continue the fight."
