Oleksii L. Petrov

Oleksiy Leonidovych Petrov was born on January 3, 1979, in the village of Tryfonivka, located in the Kherson region. In 1996, after obtaining a certificate of complete secondary education, he entered the Kharkiv Military Institute of the National Guard of Ukraine (from January 2000 — the Military Institute of Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine). He completed his studies in the specialty of "Engineering Mechanics" in 2001. For further military service, the newly minted military engineer was assigned to a unit of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, stationed in Mykolaiv. In the positions of platoon commander and deputy company commander for combat and special training, the young officer distinguished himself excellently, so as a senior lieutenant, he received a significant promotion — he was appointed head of the artillery armament service of the Kherson unit of the internal troops. Later, he took the position of head of the armament service of the technical unit of the Mykolaiv regiment of the Internal Troops (from April 2014 — the National Guard of Ukraine). It seemed that everything in his life was going perfectly — a job he understood, a friendly team, a loving wife, a little daughter… Everything changed with the undeclared war in Donbas, in the summer of 2014, when hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers, at the cost of their own lives, did not allow the regular Russian troops and their local accomplices to seize territory larger than certain districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Unfortunately, among these innocently fallen Ukrainian patriots was Oleksiy Petrov. Around 10:00 on August 23, Mykolaiv guardsmen, together with the military operational reserve of the Zaporizhzhia National Guard unit, were on duty at a checkpoint near the village of Lysyche in the Amvrosiivskyi district. Suddenly, they saw a column consisting mainly of trucks moving from the direction of the Russian border. These were Russian "volunteers" and Chechen militants heading to assist the "miners" and "tractor drivers" of the DPR. The guardsmen met the enemy with heavy fire, catching them by surprise. Recovering, the terrorists began to shoot back, but later most of those who survived fled. The victory was for the Ukrainians. Unfortunately, it came at a high price — four servicemen, including 35-year-old Major Petrov, were killed. The fallen comrades of Oleksiy Leonidovych — Major Smolyar, Junior Sergeant Yarysh, and Senior Soldier Babkevych — were soon buried at home as heroes. The fate of Major Petrov turned out to be much harder — for another 4 years, he remained in the status of a missing person, as no one from the unit saw how he died. Thus, the Petrov family had to endure 4 difficult years, waiting for Oleksiy to come home every day. As it turned out, the remains of the deceased were found and buried by the villagers. In October 2014, they were exhumed and brought to Zaporizhzhia by volunteer searchers. Major Oleksiy Petrov was buried at the Kushuhum Cemetery as a temporarily unidentified defender of Ukraine. Only at the end of 2018 did a sad conclusion from the molecular genetic examination put an end to this story…