Oleksandr O. Zhybrov

Zhibrov Oleksandr Oleksandrovych was born on July 9, 1979, in Mykolaiv. His father, a military pilot, a participant in the war in Afghanistan, is retired Colonel Oleksandr Volodymyrovych Zhibrov. Both grandfathers and an uncle were military pilots. He graduated from Kropyvnytskyi School No. 8. He entered the Kharkiv Air Force Institute. He has been at the controls since 1998 and held the position of squadron commander of the 299th Assault Aviation Brigade. He trained young pilots. Since 2014, he has repeatedly flown into combat zones. On February 24, 2022, in his Su-25 with tail number 19, near the town of Chaplynka in the Kherson region, he managed to drop bombs on a column of enemy pontoon equipment heading from Crimea to the city of Kherson. These were pontoon vehicles for crossings. After that, his aircraft, engulfed in flames, fell directly onto this column. The body of the deceased pilot was found near the wreckage of the plane by residents of the town of Chaplynka in the temporarily occupied Kherson region. He was buried there. Later, Oleksandr Zhibrov's body was reburied at the Far Eastern Cemetery in Kropyvnytskyi. He is survived by a wife and a daughter.