Dmytro B. Fialka (Shyp)

Dmytro Bohdanovych Fialka was born on June 21, 1983, in Lviv, Ukraine. He was a Ukrainian Jew. He studied at Lviv School No. 61. At the age of 16, he moved to Israel, where he completed school and university. He obtained Israeli citizenship. He served for three years in the Israel Defense Forces as a grenadier and participated in the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war. After his military service, he worked as a youth team coach in Beer-Sheva. In 2015, he returned to Lviv, where he married Eva, an employee of a Jewish youth club. The couple had a daughter and a son. Until 2020, he worked as a football coach in the Lokomotyv children's football club, the Dynamo Lviv academy, and the Lviv Children and Youth Sports School. In 2022, after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, he volunteered to join the Volunteer Ukrainian Corps, where he was an instructor and platoon commander, and recruited volunteers for the newly formed 2nd Separate Battalion of the Volunteer Ukrainian Corps named after Taras Hammer. Later, he signed a contract with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and fought as part of the International Legion of the Territorial Defense Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. On September 1, 2022, he was killed while carrying out a combat mission near the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region. The information about his death was confirmed on September 4. After a DNA analysis on October 11, 2022, Dmytro Fialka's body was handed over to his family. He was buried on October 21, 2022, in the Jewish section of the Yaniv Cemetery in Lviv.