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At the beginning of last week, a 12-second video was shared on Telegram that caused horror.

It shows a Ukrainian soldier standing in a shallow trench and smoking a cigarette. He looks at the camera and calmly says “Glory to Ukraine” (Ukrainian: Slava Ukraini) before being shot down by a hail of Russian bullets.

On the Internet, he immediately achieved hero status. Many details about the video were unclear at first, but the most burning of all questions was: who was the man

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy answered this question yesterday. Analysis made it possible to clarify the man’s identity: the man was 42-year-old Oleksandr Igorevich Matsievskyi. According to the Ukrainian secret service SBU, he was a prisoner of war.

Now he is much more than that: Zelenskyj posthumously honored the man with the title “Hero of Ukraine”. The 42-year-old is “a man who will be remembered forever,” Selenskyj said in a video message circulated in Kiev on Sunday.

According to the secret service, the sniper, who worked as an electrician in Kiev before the war, died on December 30, 2022. The body was handed over in February. Zelenskyi said the soldier was a man “all Ukrainians will know”. He honored him “for his courage, for his faith in Ukraine and for his ‘Glory to Ukraine’.”

The Misidentified Hero: Tymofiy Shadura

The final clarification of the man’s identity was preceded by a battle between two parties. Two families, two battalions and two different residences claimed the man as their own.

A day after the video was released, the Ukrainian military announced that the soldier was Tymofiy Shadura of the 30th Separatist Mechanized Brigade. At the same time, they pointed out that final confirmation would not be possible until the body was recovered.

Yet this information spread like wildfire on Twitter, praising Tymofiy Shadura as a hero:

According to the brigade, the 41-year-old disappeared near Bakhmut on February 3. Shadura’s sister spoke to the BBC: Her brother could certainly have resisted the Russians in this way. Still, she wasn’t sure either:

Shadura is still missing today.

The identification of Oleksandr Igorevich Matsievskyi

Meanwhile, Ukrainian media and bloggers claimed – rightly so it turned out – that the murdered man was 42-year-old Oleksandr Igorevich Matsievskyi. This was also stationed in Bachmut in November.

Noted Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov described several factors pointing to Matsievskyi’s identity in a lengthy Facebook post. For example, a photo of him was taken 10 days before the video was shot. He shows this with a large plaster over the right eyebrow. This patch can also be seen on the video.

He also received a photo from the morgue after Matsievskyi’s body was transferred to Ukraine. The photo clearly shows bullet holes where the bullets hit in the video.

Finally, Matsievskyi’s Territorial Defense Unit took the floor. They explained that Matsievskyi and four other soldiers were involved in a counterattack on December 30, 2022 on the outskirts of Soledar. Then they lost contact with him. They were convinced that the man in the video was Matsievskyi.

According to Matsievskyi’s brigade, his family also recognized him in the video. Matsievskyi’s mother saw the video on the couch at home while scrolling through Facebook, she told Bild. Immediately she shouted:

Her grandson (Matsievskyi’s son) also saw the video, called her in tears and shouted:

Although the loss of Matsievskyi is difficult for his family to process, his mother speaks of him with pride. He has now become a symbol of Ukraine’s resilience across the country. Journalist Butuzov wrote on Facebook:

(saw, with material from the sda ​​and dpa news agencies)