Because of the war he returned to the sky after 21 years. In memory of pilot Viacheslav Minka, who died with Juice

“Training flight for an hour and a half,” military pilot Viacheslav Minka texted to his wife on August 25 at 3:15 p.m. in a messenger.

“God bless you, my dear,” Maia replied.

The man was very punctual. So when his wife didn't receive a message from him at 4:45 p.m. about the landing, she got worried:

“Slava, where are you?”

But the man, who had almost 2500 hours of flying time, remained silent.

Later, Maia received a call from the brigade commander, Colonel Oleksii Maniushkin, who told her that Slava had crashed. He had died in a plane crash in Zhytomyr region, along with Juice and Serhii Prokazin.

“At the funeral, the commander said that Slava did not suffer, he fell to the ground already dead,” says Maia.

He chose Ukrainian roots

Viacheslav's parents divorced before he was born: his father and his eldest son settled in his native Myrhorod, while his pregnant mother, an ethnic Russian, went to the Krasnoyarsk Krai, where she gave birth. She worked as a railroad conductor, always on the road, so the boy had to learn about boarding school education.

He came to his father for the first time after 9th grade. Viacheslav liked his father's new family in Myrhorod. He was happy when he was sent to Konotop after graduating from the Kachinsk Military Aviation School.

A few years later, with his young son and daughter, he went to his mother's house in the Krasnoyarsk Krai. But according to family legend, she did not want to see him. He spent the night at his teacher's house and went back the next day.

“Then he came to Myrhorod and said to me: ‘Lidiia Semenivna, let me call you mom.’ And I answered him: ‘I can neither forbid you to call me that nor force you to. Call me whatever you want,’” says Ms. Lidiia, Viacheslav's father’s second wife.

According to her, all his life Slava was saying that he did not feel Russian and was following in his father's footsteps.

“Slava was just a golden child. He had neither arrogance towards people nor sarcasm. He was direct in his communication, compassionate. He paid attention to his father, to me, and to his brothers and nephews. He came, helped, bought gifts, and talked sincerely. I wish all mothers such a son. Once in Myrhorod, a relative called Slava, but he did not recognize her. He was worried that he didn't know his family, so I made a family tree of the Minkas for him – up to the seventh generation. He was very grateful,” thewoman recalls.

At 86, she found the strength to travel from Myrhorod to Boryspil to attend the funeral of her “dear child”. She regrets that she wore the new sandals Slava gave her five years ago for this event, but he never saw her in them.

He also did not see his niece's son in the uniform of a cadet at the Kharkiv National University of the Air Force – the boy had just entered his first year.

“We are all glad that he followed in Slava's footsteps,” says Lidiia Semenivna.

“He just couldn't be angry”

Viacheslav was buried in Boryspil, where he moved almost 30 years ago from Uman, where he served and retired. The grave is covered with flowers. In the photo, the 63-year-old man has a childlike smile.

“This is a very good photo, he was exactly like that in real life – calm and kind,” says Maryna, the pilot's stepdaughter. “At first I thought that Slava never yelled at me because he was not my father, but then I realized that he simply could not be angry or oppress anyone.”

After having married Maia, Viacheslav, who started calling his stepmother “mom” as an adult, told her two children from her first marriage to call him Slava instead of father, because they have a father.

“I always said that I had two fathers,” says Maryna. “But I talked to Slava more than I talked to my own father. I was 4 years old when he joined our family. He was very pleased when I started flying as a flight attendant on international airlines, saying: ‘You take after me, you are definitely my daughter.’ If he hadn't been my friend, I wouldn't have come to his funeral all the way from the United Arab Emirates.”

"He was never too soft with my children,” adds Maia. “When, for example, my son Andrii, as a teenager, started talking about pocket money, Slava answered him: ‘No problem, help me at the market and I'll pay you a salary.’ There was always respect between them. Andrii wanted to go to the front, but Slava wouldn't let him, saying: ‘I'll be the one to go from our family.’”

Viacheslav's own son and daughter left for Israel with their mother back in 2002. We managed to find 39-year-old Dmytro Minka, a soldier in the Israeli army.

“My father used to say: ‘When you grow up, you will understand.’ I realized when I was young that parents can live with other people's children,” says Dmytro. “I also married a woman who had a child. Now I am raising three children and think a lot about my father. As for me as an adult, he was a perfect father because you could be on equal terms with him. Other pilots used to say to him: ‘You're a man, why are you fiddling around?’ But he was fiddling with his children, didn't divide еру work into women's and men's, and was a family man.”

According to Dmytro, his father did not want his first wife to take the children to Israel. He realized that this would make communication more difficult. He also did not approve of his son's decision to serve in the Israeli army and fight with the Arabs, as he considered that war alien to Dmytro.

"I haven't seen my father since we left for Israel. We occasionally corresponded. Our relationship improved when my children were born. He talked to them and sent videos of his flights. He was going to come, but the war broke out. He sent some reports from the war about the fighting. It was scary and sad that he didn't write anything about himself,” Dmytro recalls.

He is convinced that his father's death will unite him and his sister with their Ukrainian relatives – his father wanted their family, which had many military members, to stick together.

“The boys need me”

At the age of 34, Viacheslav left the service. It was the mid-90s, and the Ukrainian army was collapsing before our eyes. Together with Maia, they started a trading business in Boryspil. The man became interested in photography and would go on fishing trips. He did not succeed in becoming a civilian pilot, so Slava quenched his longing for the sky by driving fast.

The Revolution of Dignity awakened the man to civic activism. Together with his wife, they transported substances for making explosives to the Maidan, and at the same time cooked food for the protesters.

After the Maidan, Boryspil residents elected Viacheslav as the head of the “people's council”, an organization that operated in the city as opposed to the pro-Yanukovych mayor's office. Minka was even nicknamed the people's mayor.

“In 2014, I did not let Slava go to war. A 54-year-old man, what flights! And he told me: ‘My boys need me’. He left in 2015,” says Maia.

The man had a 21-year break from piloting military aircraft. But before he retired, he was a highly skilled pilot-instructor, having mastered all the military combat aircraft known in the USSR. So he was able to quickly regain his flying skills.

From 2015 to 2018, he served first in an aviation brigade in Mykolaiv, then in the 40th Brigade in Vasylkiv. He became an aviation commander and fought for the Ukrainian Donbas.

In 2018, his contract with the Armed Forces ended, but even after returning to civilian life, the pilot said that a major war was inevitable. On February 26, 2022, he returned to his brigade in Vasylkiv.

As the press service of the 40th Brigade told us, Major Minka did not start flying right away. The airfield in Vasylkiv was constantly hit by missiles and attempts to attack the subversive group, so Viacheslav was actually defending the airbase as a private soldier.

The military medical commission did not want to return the 62-year-old pilot to service. He had undergone many examinations to prove his fitness for military operations. His excellent physical condition helped.

“My uncle was always on the move, and he taught his children and us, his nephews, to play sports. Skiing, running, dumbbells, gymnastics every morning, cold water. He never smoked, even on holidays with relatives he would drink a glass or two of alcohol, and that was it,” says Ruslan Minka.

In Vasylkiv, the major helped pilots returning to service to restore their flying skills and participated in reconnaissance and combat missions. He flew L-39 and MiG-29 aircraft and was eager to master the American F-16.

“Slava was allowed to fly around April 2022, so he was not a ‘ghost of Kyiv’. He said that by the time he started flying, all his comrades from the ATO had already died. He flew a lot, sometimes 4-5 flights a day. He texted me: ‘I'm going to wander for an hour and a half’,” says Maia.

Viacheslav was buried in a closed coffin. First, the funeral was held at the brigade's air base in Vasylkiv, then in Boryspil. Dozens of pilots whom he had trained all his life came to pay their last respects despite the war.

“It is a great honor to meet a person who ignites others with his energy. Major Minka was exactly like that. He was always outspoken and principled. He was a true patriot of Ukraine,” thebrigade commander said at the funeral of his fellow-in-arms.

Viacheslav Minka was posthumously promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

“He is alive for me”

In March of this year, Viacheslav and his wife began to realize their dream of building a house. They managed to put up a box.

“We need to cover the house, otherwise all the work will be lost,” says one of the builders. “When we heard that the pilots were killed, we immediately thought that ours was there.”

Between flights, Viacheslav would send Maia design options for the farmstead – he just lived this construction.

Maia takes us around the building and tells us what her and Slava's life was supposed to be like here, and how good it was.

“He called me Maiiechka, Maiulia, sunshine. I worked as a psychologist for the last few years, and he was proud of how many people came to me for counseling, and he respected my work. He did everything for his family. He was very responsible and caring, he never needed to be rushed into anything. We have been together for 30 years. With Slava, I got everything I dreamed of: he would always help, always be there for me, never humiliate me. He always said: ‘I will not allow anyone to insult my Maiechka.’ I was very happy with him,” thewoman says.

Today, Maia is moved even by his pedantic accuracy: when all the screws are packed in jars of the right size, all the things are folded in an exemplary manner, all the receipts are paid and stapled, and a special notebook records when the oil in the car needs to be changed...

They loved spending time together: going on a picnic, or just sitting in some beautiful place or a cafe. They dreamed of traveling after the war – Slava had never been abroad. They were never bored together.

They decided to give a separate room in their apartment to... cats, adding an enclosure to it. They gathered cats from around the city – blind and injured, treated them, and saved them from starvation. Maia goes to feed her eight pets every day, but she can't stay in those walls herself – it hurts to be there without Slava. That's why she is staying with her sister.

“I can't accept his death in any way. For me, he is alive and flying. How can I live without him?” she laments.

Maia does not know what to do with this building. Should she stop the construction? Should she sell it? But then none of the family will gather on the huge terrace that leads from the living room to the garden. It was Slava's idea.

“He wanted to gather his family there and sing ‘Chervona Kalyna’. We should sing this song here after the war,” says Maia.