Serhii Kokurin — first Ukrainian soldier killed in the Russo-Ukrainian war

For 10 years now, Ukrainians have been dying in the war with Russia. Among the thousands of fallen, the history books will definitely include Warrant Officer Serhii Kokurin, the first Ukrainian soldier to be killed by the Russian occupiers. It happened in Simferopol on March 18, 2014.

The Russians not only killed Serhii, but they also desecrated him as a Ukrainian citizen. In the house of Simferopol officers, Serhii Kokurin's coffin stood next to the coffin of a Russian occupier shot by his own men. The Crimean authorities organized a joint solemn farewell for them. The then-so-called Prime Minister of Crimea, Russian collaborator Sergei Aksyonov, even called on the audience to “honor those who died for the freedom of Crimea”. And in the city cemetery of Simferopol, Russian henchmen laid a wreath with a ribbon in the colors of the Russian flag on Serhii's grave. It read: “From the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Crimea”. The same Council helped the Kremlin to hold a pseudo-referendum in favor of the annexation of Ukrainian Crimea to Russia on March 16, 2014.

Both at the officers' house and at the cemetery, the men from Serhii’s military unit said goodbye to him. The Russians did not prevent them from paying their last respects to their fellow. Wearing Ukrainian military uniforms, they marched solemnly past Kokurin's grave. Only there was no blue and yellow flag above their column. Nor was there one over Serhii's grave.

“For two years after Serhii's death, I couldn't sleep, I was tormented by the question: could the situation in our unit have developed differently on March 18? And in the whole of Crimea? Did we, the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, have the opportunity to resist? In April 2014, about 80% of the personnel of our unit went to the mainland. And today it is clear to me that this was the maximum we were capable of doing at the time. It was just to save the unit and the lives of its servicemen,” says Serhii Kokurin's former colleague, Lieutenant Colonel Oleksandr K. (all of Kokurin's colleagues agreed to speak to hromadske based on anonymity — ed.)

Much has been forgotten over the past 10 years, but we asked the officers of the 13th Photogrammetric Center of the Chief Operational Support Directorate of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who took enemy fire together with Kokurin on March 18, 2014, to recall the first days of the Russian occupation. What was it like to stand against Russian machine gunners with Makarov pistols?

Armed assault? Absurd!

We will begin our story on February 27, 2014, when the “green men” seized the parliament and government buildings of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.

“I was then the deputy commander of the unit for logistics. The command issued an order to refrain from using weapons if possible, so as not to provoke any armed conflict, and to reinforce the unit's perimeter from the inside from an engineering point of view so that unwanted guests could not enter its territory. We started the relevant work, and since then no one has left the unit. Only civilian employees spent the night at home,” says Colonel Volodymyr Shch., the current head of the 13th Photogrammetric Center.

Serhii Kokurin was in charge of the unit's warehouse, so he gave out everything that could be used to fortify the territory.

“We didn't even have enough metal to make the “hedgehogs”, so we had to make them out of wood. We stretched barbed wire along the fence, installed metal structures behind the “hedgehogs” in front of the gate so that wheeled vehicles could not pass, and blocked the entrance to the unit with Ural trucks. We also fixed a netting — later, two Russian creatures got tangled in it. But it was all to keep people busy with some work so we wouldn't go crazy. Because when the assault began, the militants put our soldiers on the floor at the entrance and calmly entered,” recalls Lieutenant Colonel Oleksandr K.

According to him, “to keep people busy”, the unit also conducted combat training: “We collected wooden shovel handles and axe handles and practiced using them in hand-to-hand combat.”

Meanwhile, on February 28, Russians took control of the Simferopol airport and began blocking Ukrainian military units.

“We didn't even anticipate that the Russians would launch an armed assault on our unit. We are not a combat unit, but rather a research one. Moreover, there were no armed assaults anywhere in Simferopol. Russians drove up to our units, our soldiers went outside the territory — that's all. Some unit commanders brought Russians into the territory themselves and ordered their subordinates not to resist. Some negotiated with the Russians for an unimpeded exit. I know that our unit commander at the time, Colonel Andriushyn, was also summoned by the Russians and militants from the so-called Crimean self-defense for some negotiations, offering to liberate the territory. He refused. But no one here believed that the Russians would storm the area. It was an absurd assumption. Until a shot was fired,” says Colonel Volodymyr Shch.

What to do if the Russians storm the building? According to Colonel Shch, no instructions were received from the Kyiv leadership on this matter. And by that time, the Russians had already disabled the secure communication channels through which the top leadership gave orders.

“This does not mean that everyone was their own commander. There are such things as the Military Oath and the Military Charter. If there are no instructions from the higher command be faithful to the oath and make decisions in accordance with the Charter, everything is clearly spelled out in it,” says Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Z.

So, on March 18, the servicemen of the 13th Photogrammetric Center, armed with pistols with 16 rounds of ammunition each, kept their oath to the Ukrainian people.

He bled to death

On March 16, 2014, the pro-Russian authorities of Crimea held a so-called referendum on the peninsula's accession to Russia. On March 18, in Moscow, Putin and Crimean collaborators signed documents stating that Crimea was becoming part of Russia.

From the beginning of March, noisy crowds began to gather around the territory of the 13th Photogrammetric Center, calling themselves “Crimean self-defense”. One day they blocked the exits from the center with cinder blocks.

“I think the Russians brought in the homeless from Rostov Oblast. We were guarding the territory of the unit from them, but the situation beyond the territory was not in our competence. We were military and could not interfere in civilian life,” says Colonel Shch.

“The territory of the unit was about 6 hectares, with up to a dozen buildings for various purposes. It was surrounded by a high concrete fence on all sides. All the soldiers took turns on duty, monitoring the situation around the perimeter of the unit. And one day we noticed that armed men appeared in unfinished high-rises outside the unit. Most likely, one of them shot Serhii later,” says Lieutenant Colonel Oleksandr K.

On March 18, Serhii Kokurin was on duty on a two-meter glass tower. The situation was very alarming. The day before, the officers on duty at the checkpoint had chased away Russian soldiers who had come to “take over” the unit and its property, demanding that the tricolor be raised above it. Ukrainian soldiers barricaded the entrances to the buildings with bulky metal safes (fortunately, there were a lot of them), and did not even think about following the Russians' orders. They hoped that soon Kyiv and Moscow would somehow resolve the situation, that this absurdity would stop.

“We weren't scared because we didn't realize how difficult the situation was,” says Oleksandr K.

Together with a soldier, Valentyn F., he was on duty in one of the premises when he received information that armed men had arrived at the checkpoint again and were demanding to talk to the unit commander, Andriushyn. The commander went out to the militants — they did not talk to him, they just put him face down on the asphalt. Then a sniper shot several times. His shots were like a signal for the assault. Why did the Russians decide to storm the unit of military surveyors? Maybe, they will say at some interrogation someday.

The Russians launched stun grenades, and their assault rifles and machine guns started working. They passed through the checkpoint and climbed the fence and walls of the buildings. The intensity of the fire was very high: for example, 14 bullet holes were later counted in the place where Valentyn F. was standing.

“Did we feel like a military unit with a commander on the day of the assault? This is a difficult question. Our guys were sitting in each building and holding on as best they could. My fellow soldier and I barricaded ourselves on the 4th floor of one of the buildings. Lieutenant Colonel Drobin came to our door. He said that he was now acting commander and gave us an order from the higher-ups to come out and not to resist. We followed the order,” says Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Z.

At that time, Oleksandr K, with a Russian assault rifle pressed to his back, was already taking the wounded Valentyn F. outside the unit. He walked with him past the tower where Kokurin was on duty. But he did not pay attention to whether Serhii was still there. Outside the unit, he saw Colonel Andriushyn standing with his arms raised, facing the wall.

“We were constantly told not to open fire on the intercom. And what was the point of opening fire with our pistols if the guys were just being shot with machine guns and couldn't raise their heads?” says Oleksandr K.

Colonel Volodymyr Shch. tried to negotiate with the militants to allow civilians to leave the territory and stop shooting:

“The Russians have already realized that we have nothing to defend ourselves with. There was one adequate person there, probably from the intelligence service. I agreed with him to withdraw the civilians. Then I went with him to the territory where our posts were to tell the guys to come out.”

During this tour of the territory, the colonel went up to Serhii's tower. He saw blood and a dead body.

“The pathologist told me later that there were two bullets of 5.45 mm caliber. One bullet pierced his helmet and tore the skin off his head. The other one did not hit any internal organs. It just entered his spine, and Serhii was paralyzed. He could not even report himself. He bled to death,” says the colonel.

Why was Serhii killed? The officers of the unit explain that perhaps because he was on a tower with a good view of the territory, the Russians thought that he would start shooting at them from there with a machine gun. If only they knew that Serhii did not have a machine gun…

“She's afraid, the FSB is very angry in Crimea now”

Serhii was born and raised in Simferopol. He finished school there and got married. In December 1997, he joined the Ukrainian military and served in the Simferopol military enlistment office. In 2013, he was laid off. Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Z. had to deal with Serhii in his work and knew him as a balanced and responsible person. So he recommended him for a job in a military surveying unit, a calm, economical place. Who knew that in a few months it would become bloody…

“I had no problems with Serhii concerning his job. He was modest, silent, and hardworking, and when he was given a task, he fulfilled it without a word. You could always rely on him,” says Colonel Shch.

According to him, the storming of the unit lasted for about an hour. The Russians disappeared from the territory as quickly as they appeared. Everything that happened could be perceived as a nightmare, if not for Serhii's body.

Someone took him to the morgue, someone let his wife Olena know — she was seven months pregnant with her second child, and it was not easy to find someone to tell her the hard news.

“Representatives of the prosecutor's office and the Military Law Enforcement Service of Ukraine came to us and started asking us what happened, how the assault went, where each of us was during the assault. No one accused us of anything. They just recorded the facts. That was the night of March 18-19. On the morning of March 19, the Russians gathered us in the assembly hall. Someone came who introduced himself as the Minister of Defense of Crimea. He said those willing could continue to serve in the Crimean and Russian armies. Those who did not want to could leave the unit. Our commander was also sitting in the hall among us. I did not notice any signs of beating on him. The guys were whispering, and swearing, and the commander was not silent either, he was speaking quite loudly, saying that after everything that had happened, how could we stay here to serve? Then the Russians left, and the commander said that we had to go to mainland Ukraine,” says Ivan Z.

Then, on March 19, the guys raised money and sent the deputy commander for educational work to buy a funeral wreath. Then they stood at attention in front of the tower where Serhii died, took off their caps, put the wreath on the tower steps, and lit a candle.

“I don't remember what we talked about then, I don't remember our conversations at Serhii's grave,” says Lieutenant Colonel Z.

On March 22, the entire unit attended Serhii Kokurin's funeral — even those who had already signed an agreement to serve Russia were still wearing their Ukrainian uniforms at the cemetery.

“Kyiv could not decide for a long time what to do with the people who remained faithful to their oath. Only on April 2, we were informed that the unit was to be relocated to Odesa,” says Lieutenant Colonel Oleksandr K.

Already in Odesa, on the anniversary of Serhii Kokurin's death, soldiers of the 13th Photogrammetric Center installed a memorial sign in his honor on the territory of the unit. In the center of the composition is a granite plaque with a portrait of Serhii and the inscription that he was killed during the storming of the Simferopol unit, and the words “Glory to the Heroes”.

Serhiy's mother came from Crimea to attend the opening of the memorial. His wife Olena was not present. Two months after her husband's death, she gave birth to her second son, who was also named Serhii.

“Since I was wounded during the assault on March 18, the command allocated me an apartment in Odesa. Kokurin's family also received housing — in the same building as me, a two-room apartment. Serhii's mother came to register it. Olena visited several times, but it seemed illogical for her to try her luck alone with two children in a strange city. The military raised money for the needs of the Kokurin family. I don't know how much was collected. Now no one lives in the Kokurins' apartment,” says Major Valentyn F.

Lieutenant Colonel Roman B. added that none of Kokurin's family had appeared in Odesa since the outbreak of the Great War and that there was no new information about them. There was a rumor that Olena got married and had a third child.

Officers of the 13th Photogrammetric Center shared Olena Kokurina's phone number with hromadske. We called her in Crimea — but the woman did not answer. Then we texted in all possible messengers. On one of them, we found her photo and showed it to the officers, and they confirmed that it was Olena. So the phone number was correct. We texted again, explained that we were preparing a story about Serhii, and asked for a response. The response came back: “You must have the wrong number”.

“She's afraid, the FSB is very angry in Crimea right now,” Serhii's former fellow soldiers explained to me.

Now Serhii's older son is 14 years old, and his younger son will soon turn 10. All this time they lived in Crimea under Russian rule. Does Olena show them the Order for Courage, which Serhii was posthumously awarded in July 2014? At one time, his mother came to the mainland to pick it up. Unfortunately, we were not able to talk to the Kokurins. Maybe someday the sons will put a blue and yellow flag on their father's grave. If not them, then the Ukrainian community will.