Volodymyr Pavliv, my brother, died on the frontline in eastern Ukraine in 2017. He served in the Ukrainian Armed Forces for almost two years before he was killed by shrapnel near Popasna, Luhansk region.
Following his death, a number of obituaries were published in the local and national Ukrainian media. Not all of the information that they presented was accurate, and it felt as if that accuracy was not their primary aim: they seemed to have been constructed to justify my brother’s death, rather than remember his life.
The war in eastern Ukraine has already claimed thousands of lives. The overall death toll, including civilian losses, is estimated at over 13,000. According to official Ukrainian statistics, as of April 2019, 2,973 members of the Ukrainian military have been killed as a result of the war.
