Oleksii O. Siedov

Sister of the fallen paratrooper near Shakhtarsk: "I promised to bring Lyosha home by his birthday, and I did it." It took Tanya Sedova 2.5 months to find her brother's body, hastily buried in a mass grave, under gunfire, and to re-bury him with all honors in her native Dnipropetrovsk. Looking at this slender, short girl, it is difficult, almost impossible, to understand how she managed to bear this burden. Someone else in her place would have long since given up, closed themselves off, and become angry at the whole world. Someone else, but not Tatyana Sedova. She was the first among the relatives to recognize the burned body of her younger brother Lyosha in the horrific video with the downed armored personnel carrier near Shakhtarsk. She found his comrade-in-arms, who had been captured and was forced to bury the bodies of fallen comrades in one grave under the guns of the DNR fighters. She wrote to the SBU, kept in touch with the military commissar and volunteers. For one goal — to bring her brother's body back to his native land and bury him as a Hero. And she kept her word — she brought Oleksiy home by his birthday. On October 17, the boy would have turned 24 years old; on October 10, his body was brought to Dnipropetrovsk. "I knew he wouldn't come back." Oleksiy was the only son in a large family. After four daughters, everyone took care of the "youngest," but his closest relationship was with his older sister Tanya, who cared for him like a mother. When Lyosha was mobilized in March, she did not try to dissuade him. And when during his first leave, it was his brother who asked her if he needed to return to the war, Tanya replied that it was only his decision. And hearing his clear decision to continue fighting, she silently took out her stash — for boots and uniform. "I knew back then, in July, when Lyosha was returning to the ATO zone from his second leave, that I would not see him alive again," Tanya confesses two days after the funeral. "He left me and forgot his phone. He came back, then went out again and forgot his wallet. He came back again. And then I called him, saying: at least wave goodbye to me. Lyoshka waved to me, and in my head, I was thinking — he won't come back…" And that's how it turned out. On July 31, near Shakhtarsk, DNR supporters broke the column of Ukrainian armored personnel carriers with paratroopers from the 25th Airborne Brigade. Almost immediately, a horrific video of the dead appeared online, filmed by the DNR. Following it was another video where captured paratrooper Vadim Kovalenko buried his comrades, naming two of them: Sedov and Fedoriyaka. At that moment, Tanya set herself the goal — to help free Vadim from captivity to find out where her brother was buried. Vadim provided the burial coordinates. For 2.5 months, she went step by step toward her goal — calling, knocking on doors. As a result, fate led her to Vadim, who had already been freed from captivity. Tanya went to him in the Poltava region — to thank him and ask about her brother. "In early September, the relatives of the fallen Petro Fedoriyaka contacted me. Lyosha and five other fighters were buried in the same grave," Tanya recounts. "They were also looking for a way to retrieve the body. And at that moment, Vadim had already explained everything and provided the burial coordinates. We sent all the documents to the SBU and, together with my mother, submitted a DNA analysis." On September 17, Fedoriyaka's friend Roman informed Tanya that there was an opportunity to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones, and two days later, she learned that a volunteer group had joined the search for the burial site. "On October 10, I received a call saying that 8 bodies had been delivered to Dnipropetrovsk. I immediately felt: Lyoshka was among them," Tanya says. Lyosha Sedov dreamed of being a paratrooper since childhood. "Dad as proof." Tanya admits that before the identification, the thought of Lyosha's tattoo wouldn't leave her mind: several curved braids in the shape of an oval and writing in Chinese characters. She hadn't seen her brother's body — the identification was based on photographs of the surviving body parts. So she first asked to see a photo of the part of the left arm where the tattoo was, and upon seeing it, she almost cried out: yes, that's it! The tattoo that prevented her brother from being accepted into the Airborne Forces, where he so wanted to go, but which did not become an obstacle for serving in the ATO as part of the 25th Brigade. On October 18, Oleksiy Sedov was buried at the Krasnopil Cemetery, in the Alley of Glory, which was opened for the burial of heroes who died in the ATO zone. Friends, classmates, and the entire neighborhood came to say goodbye to him. Even the neighborhood dog, which had never left its spot, kept circling around the coffin. And Lyosha had promised that when he returned, he would definitely get himself a little friend: a cat or a dog. Tanya fulfilled this wish for him: she bought a kitten.