On September 9, the young woman posted a selfie of them on her Facebook account, accomplices and all smiles. Him, dark beard and patterned shirt, her, hair dyed orange and tattooed neck. Valentyna Nagorna, “Valkyrie” by her code name, and Daniil Liachkevytch, known as “Berserk”, two Ukrainian soldiers who fell in love, died together on the front last week while fighting against Russian forces.
The two soldiers, who had only been a couple for a few months, had met in the Third Azov Assault Brigade, a mechanized infantry unit in which they served. “They hadn’t been together for a long time but they shared very similar life principles,” Daniil Liashkevych’s commander told AFP.
“She wanted to do her duty and save lives”
Valentina Nagorna joined the Ukrainian army in February 2022, from the first days of the Russian invasion. The young woman, who previously worked as a biotechnologist and nail technician, was trained directly in the field to help injured soldiers and evacuate them from the battlefield.
“Despite all my skepticism about your lack of medical training, you have proven in 2022 that you can and will do it,” wrote the head of the medical service of the Third Assault Brigade, Tetyana, on her Facebook page. Kovach. A few days before her death, the two women had spoken about the mortality of doctors in combat. “You jokingly told me that one day you could become one of them,” she remembers.
Like her companion, Valentyna Nagorna “really wanted to get closer to the war. She wanted to do her duty and save lives as close to the front as possible,” Commander Daniil Liachkevych told AFP. The latter, whose age has not been made public, died following a Russian anti-aircraft missile strike, according to Ukrainian media Kyiv24.
“Neither shells nor bullets defeated him”
The latter joined the brigade when it was created in 2014. “Between the battles for kyiv, he taught medicine to everyone. He taught it harshly, without censorship, and with sophisticated humor,” said one of his brothers in arms, Roman Trokhymets, on Instagram.
“Berserk” had volunteered to “go to Mariupol for a mission of no return”, according to his comrade-in-arms. “We discussed it together and we were ready to get on a plane and die there,” he added. If he had already been wounded in combat, “neither shells nor bullets defeated him,” he adds.
“It warms our souls to know that his heart was filled with love like Valentyna’s. When the time came, they met death together,” Anastassia Vasylchenko, the ex-wife of Daniil Liashkevych with whom he remained friends, told AFP.
Hundreds of people gathered on Friday, November 9, in kyiv to pay a final tribute to the two lovers. Valentyna Nagorna and Daniil Liashkevych were cremated at a crematorium in the Ukrainian capital.
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