With flags and flowers, hundreds of people gathered Thursday in kyiv, despite the bitter cold, to pay tribute to a young poet and soldier, Maksym Kryvtsov, whose death on the front moved Ukraine.
Maksym Kryvtsov, going by the nom de guerre “Dali”, was killed on Sunday at the age of 33. He joined the army as a volunteer in 2022, after the start of the Russian invasion, and notably served as a machine gunner.
His first book, Poems from a Gapwas named among the country’s best literary works in 2023 by the Ukrainian branch of the international PEN network.
The day before his death, he posted a photo on Facebook in which he can be seen in uniform in front of a tree, a sweet smile on his lips, a bun on the top of his head and his book in his hand. “90% of the poetry here is about death,” he wrote.
On Thursday, his coffin, opened in accordance with tradition, was placed on display in St. Michael’s Cathedral, the center of the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Moscow, in central Kiev.
Two soldiers in uniform held a yellow and blue national flag with a black ribbon as a sign of mourning and a large wooden cross which will then be planted on his grave.
More than a hundred people, including many young people, crowded into the small cathedral to pay their last respects. Some sobbed. Many brought flowers, most often roses or carnations.
Several people came with potted African violets, a reference to a poem by Maksym Kryvtsov that he published in January on Facebook and in which he described his own death on the battlefield. “Violets will grow in the spring by my plucked hands,” the text says.
“We pray for the rest of the soul of warrior Maksym,” one of the priests said during the religious ceremony, calling him a “hero.” “We will remember him and continue our fight. »
Decimated generation
“Maksym Kryvtsov was our youth, our future. It is people like him who should build Ukraine” after the war, lamented to AFP Yuriï Yourchenko, a 51-year-old musician and soldier, who co-wrote several songs with Mr. Kravtsov.
Olena Smodarchuk, 21, a friend of the poet, sobs in front of the cathedral. “He was an incredibly bright person. He was very caring and supportive. He gave happiness, people always smiled at him,” she says.
“So many young men and women are dying, it’s not possible,” added, in tears, Olena Katchour, 40, who came to express her support for the relatives of the deceased.
Soldiers remove the coffin, covered with the national flag, from the cathedral. Several people kneel to the sound of an air siren going off in kyiv, regularly targeted by Russian attacks.
The remains are then exhibited on the Maidan, the central square of kyiv and the focal point of its 2014 pro-European uprising before being transported to Rivné (west), Maksym Kryvtsov’s hometown where he is to be buried on Friday.
The young man had already fought in 2014 in eastern Ukraine, against pro-Russian separatists supported by Moscow. It was there that Maksym Kryvtsov received his nom de guerre “Dali”, his mustache reminiscent of that of the Spanish painter.
The poet is not the first artist to be killed since the start of the Russian invasion.
Dozens of them – writers, dancers, musicians, etc. – have already died, leading to comparisons with the “Renaissance shooting”, a term which refers to a generation of Ukrainian cultural figures killed by Soviet authorities in the 1930s.
“‘Renaissance shot’… We are experiencing it again,” Vladyslav Rashkovan, Ukraine’s representative to the International Monetary Fund, wrote on Facebook.