“RYBA”

Daniil Rybalchenko was born in 1989 in the city of Tavriisk, Kherson Oblast. At the age of 18 (in 2007), he was conscripted into the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He served in the 79th Air Assault Brigade. He never interrupted his service. With the start of the war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, he immediately went to fight on the front line. First, in the ranks of the “Pravyi Sektor”, and later — in the MIA battalion “Harpun”. In 2015, he transferred to the “Azov” Regiment. In spring 2017, he sustained a severe head wound in battles near Mariinka. A bullet shattered the mastoid process and exited in the occipital area. In April 2017, doctors at the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Clinical Hospital named after I. I. Mechnykov fought for Daniil Rybalchenko’s life and for that of a severely wounded serviceman from Lviv, Ihor Halushka (call sign “TESAK”), who had saved his brother-in-arms “RYBA” from shelling. They performed complex surgeries. During Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he and his brothers-in-arms defended Mariupol and were at “Azovstal”. The brave warrior was killed on 9 April 2022. Identification took a long time; based on certain distinctive features, his relatives (in particular, his brother Demyd Rybalchenko, call sign “HNYDA”, also a serviceman) were able to identify him by a distinctive tattoo: a depiction of Natalka Poltavka on his right leg with a Kalashnikov rifle. A farewell to the fallen fighters of the “Azov” Regiment, Daniil Rybalchenko and Vitalii Krasovskyi, call sign “KROS”, took place at the Kyiv Crematorium on 30 June 2022. More than one hundred people came to pay tribute: relatives, friends, and brothers-in-arms.