Public-spirited, patriotic and never scared to call out injustice, Roman Ratushnyi was the kind of Ukrainian who might have become president one day – or a thorn in the side of whoever was.
The tireless activist was just 16 when he helped lead the protests that felled Kyiv’s pro-Kremlin government in 2014, before going on to campaign against corrupt city-planning deals.
It earned him acclaim from the public, death threats from his opponents and a landmark victory when courts backed his bid to stop a Kyiv park being turned into flats.
So when Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago on Monday, few were surprised when Ratushnyi swapped his placard for a gun, and volunteered to fight.
“The more Russians we kill now, the less our children will have to be killed,” he declared – only to be killed in combat himself three months later.
In death, however, he remains every bit the prominent figure he was in life – a poignant symbol of how the conflict is bleeding Ukraine’s youth of its best and brightest.
While Putin has filled his army’s ranks with convict fighters, many dying for Ukraine have been young idealists like Ratushnyi, the lifeblood of its youthful democracy.
‘Visiting his grave gives me strength’
Today Ratushnyi’s grave in Kyiv’s vast Baikove cemetery has become a pilgrimage spot for other young Ukrainians seeking fortitude when times seem particularly bleak.
Last week, in the wake of Donald Trump’s decision to hold direct peace talks with Vladimir Putin, was one such time.
“Visiting here gives me strength, and reminds me that we have no right to give up yet, even when we learn about Trump wanting to split up our country”, said Maryna Opanashchuk, 18, laying flowers with her friend Alina Orliuk.
“He has become a symbol of the young generation who have died, and also a symbol of the Revolution of Dignity,” added Ms Orliuk, using the Ukrainian name for the 2014 protests.
“I was just eight back then, but I remember it well – my grandparents cooked food for demonstrators. I grew up on the values that people like Ratushnyi represented.”
Maryna and Alina, who were only 15 when the war broke out, aren’t the only people to name-check Ratushnyi. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, described him in a speech as part of “a new generation of young Ukrainians” who were torchbearers of European democracy.
Ratushnyi’s father Taras, who himself took part in anti-Soviet demonstrations during Communism’s dying days, told The Telegraph: “I feel great pride in my son – that’s all I have left now, after he was killed in action. Thousands of people claim he changed their lives, and he leaves a great legacy.”
True to his street activist spirit, the park Ratushnyi helped save, Protasiv Yar, has a graffiti mural in his honour, while a Kyiv street has also been renamed after him. Ukraine’s thoroughfares used to commemorate Soviet-era apparatchiks and generals, but today Roman Ratushnyi Street is one just of many renamed after young citizens killed in the war.
Among them are numerous young writers, poets, and comedians, who realised that when Putin’s tanks crossed the border, the pen was no longer mightier than the sword.
According to the authors’ charity PEN Ukraine, which keeps a running tally on its website, at least 186 Ukrainian “culture makers” have been killed in the war.
Among them was Ukraine’s own Siegfried Sassoon, Maksym Kryvtsov, 33, whose poetry about life in the trenches was published just weeks before his death last year.
‘Russia attacks every level of society’
Writer Oleksandr Mykhed, whose book The Language of War chronicles the conflict’s social impact, draws parallels with how numerous Ukrainian intellectuals perished in their prime during Soviet repression in the 1920s and 30s.
“They all died having completed just a few prominent works, and it’s the same now,” he said. “This is how genocide works, attacking every level of society, be it children kidnapped in the occupied territories, or those their 20s who might become tomorrow’s leaders.”
It is not just about the loss of future Volodymyr Zelenskys. Many of those inspired by the Revolution of Dignity harbour no big-time political ambitions, but are active in environmentalism, human rights, or local journalism.
They stop oligarchs buying influence, and make politicians think twice before killing or jailing critics, things that once went largely unchallenged in Ukraine.
All help weave the fabric of a strong civil society – the kind that has now all but vanished in Russia.
The roll call of fallen activists is endless. There was anti-corruption crusader Pavlo Petrychenko, 31, who died last March, after successfully petitioning to ban online casinos during martial law, which he said tempted frontline soldiers into gambling.
Then there was volunteer combat medic Iryna Tsybukh, a leading voice for women in combat, killed aged just 25.
Another was animal-rights campaigner Kostiantyn Yuzviuk, 23, whose instructions for his funeral last summer started a new trend for non-traditional send-offs.
Rather than a formal military affair, which reminded him of Ukraine’s Soviet past, he told friends to hold a bonfire party, where they shared rude memes about the deceased. He also requested cremation rather than burial, joking darkly that “it will be difficult for our guys to dig trenches in our bones”.
The willingness to challenge old thinking, and to see humour in adversity, is one reason why Ukraine has weathered its darkest days. Indeed, according to Ratushnyi’s father it helps explain why Russia invaded in the first place.
“Roman belonged to a new generation with a new way of thinking, the first generation who weren’t linked at all to the Soviet past,” Taras said. “I think that’s the real purpose of this ear - to kill the generation that would stand up to Putin.”