“Everyone was going to die”

To save the lives of his men, he lost his own. It was October 2. Five days earlier, Lieutenant Colonel Ihor Hryb and soldiers from his battalion received orders to leave the Kherson region in southern Ukraine for Donbass in the east of the country. “We had to hold a village at all costs, it was chaos”explains Ivan, a non-commissioned officer belonging to the 186^e battalion speaking on condition of anonymity, returning from this mission. The soldiers had been deployed overnight into unfamiliar terrain. Above all, the battalion was understaffed and suffered from a drastic lack of equipment. “We only had machine guns but no artillery or armored vehicles [pour contenir l’avancée russe]continues the non-commissioned officer. Ihor knew what that meant, that everyone was going to die. »

On October 2, according to Ivan and another NCO, the commander of the 186^e battalion sends a final recommendation on a messaging loop: “Make your decisions, save people’s lives. » He disappears the same day. The news of his death, in circumstances still not officially clarified, spread among all the soldiers, who finally left their positions the next day. For many, there is no doubt: the commander committed suicide after refusing to follow orders.

Lieutenant Colonel Ihor Hryb joined the army at the start of the Donbass war in 2014. Decorated twice, he was married and the father of a little girl. The 123^e territorial defense brigade, to which the 186 is attached^e battalion, announced the opening of an internal investigation into the circumstances of the death of a “soldier devoted to the military cause and his country”.

“Ihor is a hero”

Saturday October 5, many soldiers of the 186^e battalion went to the funeral of Ihor Hryb in his birthplace, Kryve Ozero, in the south of the country. At the end of the morning, in front of his wife’s house, the entrance to which remained open, the whole crowd seemed to know each other. The inhabitants greet each other with a nod and a handshake. The soldiers, who come and go inside with flowers to pay homage to the deceased, talk in the street and exchange deep hugs. A few injured men, amputees, pass in front of the crowd with dull looks. « A Kryve Lake [7 500 habitants avant-guerre], we lost 76 mentell Mykhaïlo, a retiree who had known Ihor Hryb. But look how many are injured…”

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