Hundreds of people flocked to the gold-domed St. Michael’s Monastery in central Kyiv on Saturday to attend the funeral of a young Ukrainian activist who was killed in the east and was a figure of the pro-movement.-European Maidan, noted AFP.
Roman Ratouchny died on June 9 near Izium in the Kharkiv region, where Ukrainian forces are facing the Russian army that invaded the country on February 24.
On Saturday morning, four soldiers carried the coffin of the deceased, greeted by the crowd, in the presence of many soldiers. The coffin was placed at the entrance to the monastery where the funeral service took place.
Hundreds of people silently attended the ceremony, some carrying flowers, others a Ukrainian flag on their backs, an AFP journalist noted.
A gathering is scheduled for noon on Independence Square (Maidan in Ukrainian) and the coffin will be buried in Baikove Cemetery in southern Kyiv, where many Ukrainian figures are buried.
Roman Ratouchny, who, like many other civilians, fought in the ranks of the Ukrainian army from the beginning of the Russian offensive, was one of the first students to protest on Independence Square in late 2013. This launched the pro-European Maidan protest movement that led to the resignation of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.
The announcement earlier this week of the death of Ratouchny, who had also become a famous anti-corruption activist, sparked a spate of reactions on social media, including that of England football legend Gary Linecker, who retweeted the information and wrote: “tragic” .
“Roman Ratouchny, one of the student protesters who was beaten by the police on the first night of the Maidan revolution (…), I’ve interviewed him several times (…) a very lively, very intelligent guy,” tweeted journalist Oliver Carroll.