Petro P. Khyzhniak

Petryk Khizhniak was born in 1963 in the village of Pastyrske, Smiila district, Cherkasy region, and lived almost his entire life in the city of Smiila. He participated in the liquidation of the Chernobyl disaster. He was actively involved in the public life of Smiila. In 2014, he became an active volunteer, transporting aid to ATO soldiers for years, for which he was awarded a presidential commendation. He received numerous awards from the Ukrainian Cossacks. Despite his disability, in 2019 he enlisted for contract service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he held the position of driver-machine gunner in the engineering-sapper platoon. He was killed on March 16, 2022, during an artillery shelling near the village of Kamianka in the Kharkiv region. He is buried in the city of Smiila.