“Heroes never die!” friends, family and admirers shouted in Ukrainian as Roman Ratushnyi’s coffin was loaded aboard a hearse on a square in the Ukrainian capital now decorated with destroyed Russian tanks and vehicles
Poppies, the blood-red 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 arc of his shortened life symbolized that of Ukraine’s postindependence 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.
From the square, the hundreds of mourners then 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.
During the protests where riot police used batons and eventually bullets with abandon, the two friends sheltered together for one night in St. Michael’s, the cathedral where the memorial service for Ratushnyi was held Saturday morning. Poppies and a traditional loaf of bread were placed on his coffin covered with Ukraine’s blue and yellow flag.