Illustration

Serhii Molchanov

“Pelmen” — “Dumpling”

18 July 2002 — 11 October 2023, Luhansk Oblast
UAL Mariupol, 2021–2022

“He called me from Mariupol and said a war was coming: ‘Pack a suitcase.’ I answered, ‘Serhii, what are you talking about—what war?’ And then it began. I asked, ‘Why did you go? You have so many health problems [he had a serious spinal condition]—where are you going?’ ‘No—if not me, then who? Others will stay put; I’ll go,’” his sister Olha recalls.

Sometimes it felt like Serhii never slept. Plast, the Foundation of Regional Initiatives (FRI), Building Ukraine Together, and—since 2021—the Ukrainian Leadership Academy. Military trainings, charity concerts. “You seemed to be in every organization at once, and I was so proud of you. One of those teenagers from the east with a strong Ukrainian spirit and a clear grasp of harsh reality. That’s what we talked about then—about the war, the east, the language, about how we had to change everything,” says Kateryna Bosiachenko.
When the ATO began, he passed children’s drawings to soldiers. It was hard to imagine those children would one day wear the uniform—that the war would still be going on. A few days before the full-scale invasion, Serhii signed up as a volunteer with the The Right Sector Ukrainian Volunteer Corps so he’d have an assigned place to serve. He went to war straight from the Ukrainian Leadership Academy chapter. He reassured us, saying he was only going to Kyiv for a week to volunteer—then he joined the military.

Later he laughed, remembering that everyone had believed him. He joked about everything, all the time—it made things easier: “Smile; life isn’t as long as it seems!”
“I never want this to happen again. I don’t want that onslaught to come to us—shooting people for peaceful protest and banning freedom of speech. Ukraine is my land, and I feel at home here. In the last couple of years my city has changed and grown: youth centers and creative hubs have opened; being Ukrainian has ‘come into fashion.’ The difference between 2014 and now is a stark contrast! And I won’t let anyone barge into my home. I consciously joined the Volunteer Corps because I want to fight solely for the idea.”
For his achievements, he was posthumously awarded the Iron Plast Cross No. 157.

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