{"id":230529,"date":"2022-12-02T12:04:13","date_gmt":"2022-12-02T10:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uacrisis.org\/mehanik"},"modified":"2023-01-02T12:00:45","modified_gmt":"2023-01-02T10:00:45","slug":"mehanik","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uacrisis.org\/en\/mehanik","title":{"rendered":"Stateless mechanic who died for Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

While the war is going on, no one will publish official data on the number of soldiers who lost their lives defending Ukraine. Who needs this statistics today – it makes it difficult to look into the face of each dead person. The main thing is that for us they will be heroes forever. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet some figures are known. At the end of August, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhnyi, said that there were already 9,000 fallen heroes. He added: \u201cNot only servicemen and not only those who took up arms take part in this war – our little kids who are not guilty of anything, except that they were born right here and at this very time. They really do not understand anything that is happening, but they definitely need protection in Soledar, Bakhmut, Velyka Novosilka, as well as here, because their father is at the front and may be among those almost nine thousand heroes who have died.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is one of these nine thousand stories<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are still in front of my eyes. Two grieving women, black from distress. Yulia and Lilia. The wife and sister of our countryman Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Leonenko from Zeleny Kut, who was buried on September 30 at the Alley of Glory at the central cemetery of the village of Krynychky. In the village of Zaytseve, the Bakhmut district of Donetsk region, according to the official notice (funeral letter), \u201cduring mortar shelling, he received wounds incompatible with life and died on September 25 at 4:30 p.m.\u201d He turned 33 on August 29…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The youngest of the Leonenko family, Volodya was born in the Petropavlovsk district of   Dnipropetrovsk region. In 1995, their family moved to Krynychky. Father Oleksandr Vasyliovych worked as a mechanic, and mother Natalya Volodymyrivna worked as a milkmaid at the then collective farm named after Lenin. Volodya studied at Stepanivska School. Then he went to the Shchorsk Agricultural Vocational Technical School, where he was trained to be a mechanic. He got another degree in welding in one of the schools of Dniprodzerzhynsk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The war for him began in 2015, when he became a member of the anti-terrorist operation. He served in the 9th Motorized Infantry Battalion \u201cVinnytsia\u201d of the 59th Motorized Brigade.\u00a0He was in the hottest spots, for example, in Popasna, the Luhansk region, for a year and a half. He knew what he stood for then and now at the very \u201czero\u201d in the east. As he told his family, \u201cI fight for my country, I defend my Motherland.\u201d These were not just lofty, pathetic words. Behind them were his wife, children, parents, sister and brother, fellow villagers, you and me. He did everything possible to prevent the enemy from advancing deep into the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe he would have stayed to serve under the contract (he had such an idea, and he fought skillfully), but Mechanic (Volodymyr\u2019s military nickname) wanted to see his son, now seven-year-old Artur, grow up. In order to provide for his family, he worked in the ATB trading network, the Agrocenter K pig-fattening complex, at construction sites together with his brother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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with son Artur<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From the first minutes of russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Volodymyr knew that he would take up arms again to defend the most precious things. On March 3, he was already far from his home. At first, he guarded strategic facilities in the Kharkiv region, together with his comrades he held back the enemy at the border of the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions near Mezhova, in a special purpose unit near New York (there is such a settlement in the Donetsk region), then near Zaytseve, just 200 meters from the enemy’s positions .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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According to his family (and they were told by Volodya’s brothers-in-arms), that position was terrible. The enemy attacked from all sides. And our soldiers began to retreat. Vovchyk covered the boys, fired at the orcs with a machine gun, which saved the lives of many of his comrades. His life was cut short by a sniper\u2019s bullet. Mechanic worked too well and was too dangerous for the enemy…<\/p>\n\n\n\n