We are a family from Kyiv. I met my husband at the age of 17, we spent time out together, and we started dating when he was 22 and I was 23. We were born on the same day, but with a difference of 1 year.
Andriy was very keen on cooking and knife throwing, and he also liked shooting. It was he who taught me how to shoot and took me to shooting ranges.

And it happened so that he connected his life with both. He worked in well-known catering establishments as a chef (Misha Katsurin’s Thai Hello), he opened Urban Space 500 together with Anton Yadykin in 2018 and he worked there as a sous chef and a chef, he was a senior shift manager at Druzi Cafe and a lot of others. I always had something to talk about with my beloved, we had many common interests and hobbies, especially since I worked as a manager in a catering establishment for many
years. In civilian life, he even called himself a kitchen worker.

In 2020, our long-awaited son Artem was born. Andriy was a wonderful, kind, sensitive, and caring father, he dreamed of attending his son’s first concert in kindergarten, taking him to his first training session, to school, teaching him how to swim, but this did not happen because he was already at war and died on 7 October 2023.
He did not have a university degree, but this did not prevent him from achieving the heights in cooking and moving forward in his career. But the war made changes in the life of every Ukrainian. In the first days of the full-scale invasion he tried to be useful and made barricades, Molotov cocktails, organised patrols with local residents and even tried to join the Armed Forces, but was not accepted because of lack of experience. Nevertheless, he fulfilled his wish and joined the ranks of 32nd Brigade of Unit A 4784 in January 24, 2023. He chose the position of sniper shooter himself, which surprised me, because I thought he would choose to work in the field kitchen. He liked it a lot, he was constantly training and improving his skills. He completed training (sergeant’s school) at Goncharivsky, though the unit has not given him a military rank yet, then he was on training in Germany and completed Marxist training with the Come Back Alive Foundation, and even became a bit famous because an article about him was published in Come Back Alive and the Obozrevatel channel. He fought in the east and performed combat missions. His commander and comrades-in-arms praised him very much, saying that he was a man of his word and deed, not afraid of anything, throwing grenades from the trenches with his bare hands so far that not everyone could do it. He constantly brought animals from the battlefield, even a hedgehog once. He had three dogs and cats there.

I knew and fell in love with Andrii who was faithful, honest, not often talkative, always with a penetrating and serious look, cheerful but not with everyone, a real man… For me, he was and remains to be everything – a friend, a lover, a father of our son, a warrior on the battlefield and in life…

I would also like to add that he died during a combat mission on the 7th of October 2023 from mortar fire while returning to the dugout. Death occurred 20 minutes after being wounded (internal bleeding).