Dmytro Konteko, a 21-year young soldier, is on rest in the Lychakiv Cemetry in Lviv. He came there never being tired of wars and attacks. He was just marking his day in the history of Ukraine and the world. When he joined a Military School at the age of 15, he and his parents never thought that he would have been a ‘War Hero’ after six years.
It was his first military operation that happened on 26 February, the third day of the Russian invasion, near the southern city of Kherson. The young man who had bright dreams about his country has died in the warfare.
There was no family around Dmytro Kotenko when they put him on the ground. His parents did not hear the gunshots that rang out over his grave. They did not hear the sound of the ribbon tied to the wooden cross above him as it fluttered in the wind. They did not see the rough earth that first landed on his coffin and they did not lay a flower over him when he was completely covered by the earth.
Konteko’s family didn’t know that their son was dead and buried there in the cemetery that day. Finally, they were informed by Konteko’s childhood friend, Yarovenko. Yarovenko was struggling and working up all night to take the courage to make a call. He had a restless night on his army bunk in Lviv. They both met at the age of 15 at the Military School. The days passed they had together in his mind during the moments while he was holding his coffin on the way to the cemetery. The departure of his beloved friend made Yarovenko a living victim of war.
Konteko’s father was a truck driver. His mother worked on a local farm. He was from a poor family with two other siblings other than Konteko. “We knew that something like this could happen, and we would have to go and defend our land,” Yarovenko shares.
When people from the village asked why they wanted to join the army in wartime, Kotenko would say, “If not me then who?”
Yarovenko, an only child, had found something like a brother in Kotenko. “Neither of us liked the city-like entertainment, clubs, etc,” Yarovenko said. “We loved spending time in nature — fishing, hunting, picnics. We loved to go to the river with friends.”
They worked together on an old car — a Red Zhyguli — that Kotenko was fixing upon his family plot. They repaired motorbikes and drove them on the rural roads around the home. They got to know each other’s families.
“Dmytro’s parents loved him and he loved them,” Yarovenko said, wiping tears from his cheeks. “Dmytro would always help them with repairs, he was good at that. Even at school or at the academy he would always help. He was very good to his parents. I never heard them argue.”
Yarovenko wanted to join an artillery unit but Kotenko’s dream was to be a paratrooper. After two years at the academy, they were separated — Yarovenko to the western city of Lviv to train for artillery and Kotenko to the southern city of Odesa to train to be a paratrooper.
“We messaged each other every day,” Yarovenko said. “We talked about everything. Regular things — how are you? What is happening where you are? We were close friends, we just talked.”
They were together from July to October for training. It was a happy time. On 31 December, their families got together to ring in the new year, and a month or so later Kotenko came to Lviv to visit Yarovenko before deploying south on an operation. They stayed up late, drinking a little and talking. Along with Ukraine’s borders, Russia’s forces were massed, waiting for orders to invade, but in Lviv life was normal and that night the war felt like a distant thing.
The next morning, Kotenko and Yarovenko said their goodbyes and Kotenko went south. They continued messaging every day. On 26 February, Kotenko stopped responding, and Yarovenko feared the worst. Eventually, he reached the commander of Kotenko’s unit by phone, who told him his friend had been killed by a mortar shell.
“I don’t have all the details yet,” Yarovenko said. “There was shelling, there was an explosion, Dmytro died.”
When he dialed the number for Kotenko’s parents, there was still a phone connection, and in a short conversation, he told them that their son was gone. When he tried to call later about the funeral, the aerial bombardment of Sumy had worsened and the line would not connect. He kept trying but the line stayed dead. So Kotenko’s body was brought to Lviv and buried there without them because the city was safe from falling shells.
Yarovenko traveled alone from his base to the Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church for his ‘owned bother’s see off’. He stood alone on one side of the nave. The smoke of incense reminded him that his beloved is just a memory.
As Kotenko’s coffin was lowered, Yarovenko stood to one side, behind the honor guard that fired the guns. It was the saddest thing he had ever experienced. “I watched my friend being buried far from his home,” he said. Afterward, he stood silently, looking at the grave, the sole mourner left, alone with the gravediggers as they cleared away their tools.
“We never got the chance to meet at the front,” he said. All that was left was the hope of speaking to Kotenko’s parents soon. Yarovenko has one more duty left, that is the memory of their son, which he will carry with him as he waits for his turn to fight and carry with him to the frontline when he goes. He has to fight with life and for life, until he meets Konteko’s parents.
This cross-section of the life story is a representation of thousands. The aftermath of the war is the tears of thousands of fathers, mothers, siblings, wives, and kids. Not the victory and prosperity.