Ihor V. Bilevych

Bilevych Ihor Volodymyrovych was born on October 4, 1971 in the city of Shostka, Sumy region. After graduating from Shostka Secondary School No. 1, he studied at the Hlukhiv State Pedagogical Institute in Sumy region from 1988 to 1993. He served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and worked as a labor education teacher. In 1995, he was appointed a lecturer at the Department of Labor Education of the Hlukhiv State Pedagogical Institute. From 2000 to 2005, he studied in the postgraduate program at the National Pedagogical University named after M.P. Drahomanov in Kyiv. In 2003, he took the position of a lecturer at the Department of Engineering Graphics of the National University of Food Technologies (Kyiv). At the same time, from 2005 to 2008, he also worked as the executive secretary of the National Union of Folk Art Masters of Ukraine. In 2008, he moved to the position of senior lecturer at the Department of Wooden and Metal Art Products of the Kyiv Institute of Decorative and Applied Arts and Design. Later, he returned to his alma mater as a senior lecturer at the Department of Technological and Professional Education, and since 2018 as an associate professor of the same department at the Hlukhiv National Pedagogical University named after Oleksandr Dovzhenko. Since January 2015, Ihor Bilevych has participated in the war in eastern Ukraine, being a participant in combat operations. Having mastered the military profession of an artilleryman, he defended the Butivka mine on the northern outskirts of Donetsk. In March 2016, he was demobilized and returned home to Hlukhiv, continuing to be engaged in creativity and teaching students at the Hlukhiv University. In addition to his pedagogical work, he was actively involved in public activities. With the support of friends, he founded a woodcarving festival in Hlukhiv. For self-development, he mastered willow weaving, blacksmithing, pottery, leather processing, and other crafts, and taught these skills to students. He built his own house with his own hands. He also became interested in the art of wielding a saber. Together with a friend in 2018, he created the Cossack club "Harda". With the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he voluntarily went to the territorial recruitment center and joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He took part in the battles on the approaches to Kyiv, and then from May 2022 he was at the forefront in the Donetsk region. He died on September 29, 2022 near the village of Yampil in the Donetsk region. He rushed to save a comrade and received a shrapnel wound to the neck. The farewell ceremony for the fallen took place on October 5, 2022 in Hlukhiv near the memorial to the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred. Ihor Bilevych was buried in the Voznesensky cemetery.