"HORAN"

Senior Soldier Andrii Shkvorets, callsign Horan, was killed on 31 March 2022 in a downed helicopter that was evacuating wounded personnel from the Azovstal plant in Mariupol, Donetska Oblast. He and his brothers-in-arms were supposed to be delivered to a hospital. He was 51 years old. Andrii was born in Donetsk. He studied at School No. 94 and graduated from Vocational School No. 9. In 2015, he joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and later transferred to the Separate Special Purpose Detachment “Azov.” He served as a senior machine gunner. “On 24 February 2022, Andrii and his brothers-in-arms began defending Mariupol. I was in the city too. It was hell. Andrii visited me at home several times. He said: ‘They’re pushing very fast; the fighting is already in the city.’ After I left, he wrote: ‘I was so worried about you. You’ve left—now I’m calm.’ At the moment I received that message, he had been seriously wounded by a sniper. But he wrote to me that it was minor. In reality, his lungs were pierced. On 31 March, the severely wounded were being evacuated by helicopters from the encircled Azovstal. The one Andrii was in was shot down over territory captured by the enemy,” says his sister, Nataliia. “Horan—a man with golden hands, a huge heart, a machine gunner of a cosmic level. He didn’t have a second number on the heavy machine gun—because finding a second number is harder than finding a machine gunner. Horan did the work of two. A hard worker, the backbone of this war. He even managed to spot and correct for himself through binoculars and camouflage perfectly. He didn’t shoot like everyone else—‘not correctly.’ His shooting position was awkward, and he zeroed his sight not ‘by the book.’ But he was a shaman,” recalls his commander, Vadym. “Andrii had so many phrases and quotes that will remain like signposts for our family. He often said: ‘Everything is known by comparison. You live, and you think that right now everything is either good or bad. And only with time do you look back and understand how it really was, and draw conclusions.’ Now, when I or someone in our family faces challenges, we say: ‘Let’s remember what Andrii told us. This is how we should act,’” says Nataliia. Andrii Shkvorets was bid farewell on 17 August 2024 in Kyiv. He is survived by his sister and three nephews.