Artur Ya. Hulyk (Pitbul)

In his life, there were many hardships, travels, and hard work… Arthur Yaroslavovych Hulyk was born on July 17, 1983, in the city of Lisosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. He was the eldest child in a family that moved to Siberia from Ukraine. In 1989, his father was killed in a criminal attack on his way to work, and his mother returned with little Arthur and his two younger sisters to their native Lviv region. Arthur's childhood was spent among friends who loved him very much. He was kind, sincere, and clever, could make a good joke, and helped his friends and neighbors. He studied at Borisлав Secondary School No. 5. After finishing the 9th grade, he continued his education at the Pidbuzh Professional Technical School, where he mastered the professions of painter, plasterer, and tiler. He was passionate about drawing and sports—he swam excellently, performed complex exercises on gymnastic apparatus, and attended a football section. Since his youth, he led a healthy lifestyle—he did not smoke or consume alcohol. When his mother died in 2005, Arthur was forced not only to earn a living for himself but also to help his sisters in every way possible. According to them, he took care of his nieces, supported them morally and financially, and was their support, a second father. He worked as a builder in Truskavets and went to Moscow for work. In December 2013, as the events of the Revolution of Dignity began in Kyiv, Arthur and his friends went to the capital to defend the European choice and the dignified life of their people. He often called his relatives, came back for a short time several times, and then returned to the EuroMaidan. In February 2014, as part of one of the self-defense units during bloody barricade clashes, he received six dangerous shrapnel wounds to his face and eye. He was offered to go for treatment in Poland, but instead, Arthur, when his wounds had barely healed, signed up for the ranks of the reservists of the National Guard of Ukraine, taking the position of a machine gunner in the 2nd section of the 2nd platoon of the 2nd company of operational assignment of the operational assignment battalion (reservists) military unit 3027 of the Northern Operational Territorial Association of the National Guard. Since June 2014, he participated in the anti-terrorist operation in Eastern Ukraine, proving himself to be a skilled scout, a brave and selfless fighter, a reliable comrade with whom it was easy to share both the dangers of battle and the hardships of field life. On June 26, 2014, around 18:00, during a ceasefire unilaterally declared by the President of Ukraine, checkpoint No. 1, located on the western outskirts of Sloviansk, was attacked by separatists: after a 30-minute artillery shelling, tanks moved for the first time during the ATO to attack the positions of Ukrainian soldiers (as it later turned out, these machines had just been brought in from Russia). The National Guard and Armed Forces of Ukraine fighters, among whom was reservist soldier Hulyk, resisted, destroying one of the tanks and retreating from an unfavorable position only after receiving the appropriate order. Together with his comrades, despite the shrapnel wounds he received during the battle, reservist soldier Hulyk fired from a grenade launcher and small arms. Under enemy fire, he personally helped evacuate the wounded but received another shrapnel wound, from which he soon died in the arms of his comrades… Thousands of people, both acquaintances and strangers, accompanied the 30-year-old hero on his final journey—first in the capital's Independence Square, and then in his native Boryslav, where a three-day mourning was declared in his honor, and in Truskavets, where he was buried next to his mother's grave.