"Son, what's going on?" — "Mom, there's a war going on." In memory of the Hero of Ukraine Andrii Verkhohliad

My interlocutor knows each of them: “The family came from Kharkiv, they have three children, he went to war in December, they buried him in January; this boy was 20, he is the only child of his mother, every week his grandmother is brought here; this one was killed along with his companions in Odesa; and this is my Andrii...”

Andrii Verkhohliad's mother, Liudmyla, brought him white roses. She pulled faded red ones out of a cut 6-liter bottle. They were frozen. She broke through the ice crust and put fresh ones in the water.

The woman does not mourn aloud or cry or talk at the grave. She does not believe that her son is here. She visits the photo.

The portrait shows a 27-year-old man with a confident and steely look. It was hard to find a photo of him being serious because he was smiling in all of them. He was always smiling.

“I won't be anything but a soldier”

The day before, we talked at Ms. Liudmyla's home. The walls, shelves, and the whole corner of the room are covered with photos. And he was everywhere. Her son, alone, with his wife at a wedding, with his wife and daughter at a New Year's photo shoot.

A beautiful 60-year-old woman with a grieving face wears a black vyshyvanka. Her son had blue eyes and blond hair. He was handsome.

When he was six, his father left for another family, and she raised the children (Dmytro is eight years older) alone.

“Even though I was no longer a military wife, we kept the army's way of life. We had to clean up the mess and keep everything clean and tidy. Andriusha laughed: ‘Mom, you should put tags on everything.’ ‘I will.’ I told them: ‘You are future men, who will need you if you can't clean up after yourself?’ And they learned. They even cooked and baked. Andriusha loved to experiment, he had to try everything himself: ‘Mom, why can't I make pancakes?’ – ‘Didn't you feel with your fingers that it's starch, not flour?’ – ‘How could I? It's all white,’ and he would laugh again.”

The woman opens a folder. Children's photos and school certificates are scattered across the table. He was the first everywhere, always the winner. Whether it's the game “Love at First Sight” or nominations for “Best Actor” or “Best Journalist”. Winner in air rifle shooting, pulling up on the bar, participant of the English poetry evening and the history Olympiad. Sports days, exhibitions, competitions, military training...

“Andriusha participated in everything possible and impossible. I asked: ‘When are you going to study?’ He wanted to be a leader everywhere and always. He wanted to be the first to learn, show, lead, and make people follow him,” she says, not boasting, but telling it like it is.

Once there was a basketball competition at school. And he felt sick and flushed; his blood pressure spiked. And the nurse took him out of the final. So he started to argue, but it didn't help: “Call my mom!”

The woman came running from the kindergarten (she works as a teacher), and her son was in the isolation ward. She knew that the more he was not allowed to play, the more he would get angry. She was clear:“If your condition stabilizes during this 15-minute break, I will stand by you while you play.” And he calmed down, and she stood there, and their team won.

It was just like that when Andrii Verkhohliad decided to become a soldier in the 4th grade, you could bang your head against the wall, but nothing would change. His mother refused as much as she could because she had spent half her life in garrisons. She wanted her son to have a normal job.

“He has a military father and grandfather. He grew up near the barracks, saw the equipment, and played war games. And although he studied well and could enter any university for free, he was angry: ‘Don't push me, I'll take my documents and not study anyway. I won't be anything but a soldier.”

In 2016, Andrii Verkhohliad graduated with honors from the Petro Sahaidachnyi Army Academy. The war in the East of Ukraine had been going on for two years by that moment.

The senior graduates of the academy were returning to Zviahel, a city of soldiers, in coffins.“Son, what’s going on?” – “Mom, there is a war going on, people are dying. It doesn't happen otherwise. And we have to be there.”

Two weeks after graduation, Andrii Verkhohliad, call sign Livsha, took part in his first battle near Volnovakha.

I found about the third injury from the article

Since then, he has been fighting. He became a battalion commander of the 72nd separate mechanized brigade named after the Black Cossacks. He received two Bohdan Khmelnytsky orders, including one for storming the enemy's Almaz position near Avdiivka.

The soldiers of the unit raised the Ukrainian flag there, held the position, and repelled enemy attacks for almost a week until they were replaced by another unit of the brigade. He was proud of the non-state “People’s Hero of Ukraine” title.

He was wounded three times. The first time, 22 grenade fragments pierced his body. One of them pierced his skull and flew past a bundle of nerves. Several fragments were not removed, but doctors assured him that his body was young and they would be encapsulated. He laughed that now he would “shine in a frame at the airport”. He was away from home for two months: “I promised the guys I would come back, I can't stay here, how will they be without me?” – “Andriusha, you won't be able to move around the house” – “It's okay, they will carry me in their arms. I'll be treated with activated charcoal, it helps with everything.”

His mother learned about the third injury from an article:“Why didn't you tell me?” – “Oh, I'm not going to the hospital with such nonsense, I said at the station: ‘Take it out yourself’. They pulled out the fragment, put brilliant green and plaster on it.” – “Son, there's a half-leg wound.” – “Mom, it's okay. A couple of days and it will be over.”

And he returned to the “Industrial Zone”, laughing. “He turned everything into a joke, everything was easy and fun,” the woman recalls.

“Once, back at school, he pulled one of his friends out of the river, who had leg cramps. I heard about it by accident when the boys called him a 'lifeguard'. ‘Who were you saving?’ – ‘Oh, no, I just helped a little’.”

Andrii did not recognize this as a heroic act or something that should be told. He said:“Well, what else was I supposed to do?” It was the same in the war. He considered it work and saw his place there.

He was called a young commander of a new generation, and he wanted to break the “sovok” (Soviet Union mentality – ed.). “Why do I have to sign 30 pieces of paper to get one pen?”

Once a general arrived at the position. It was 20 degrees below zero. The Ukrainian military occupied a trench that had previously been occupied by Russians. And the higher-ups started shouting that it was not okay, that the trench did not meet the height requirements. Verkhohliad, then a senior lieutenant, said, “If you need it, take a crowbar and cut it down.” “Andriusha, you can't talk to your superiors like that. The brigade commander will get a slap on the wrist.” – “Mom, we have a brigade commander like me.”

He was very worried about his subordinates: he wanted them to be dressed and to have something to shoot with, and he took care of everything for them. He believed that officers are worthless without soldiers. When some of the guys died, he did not cry. He was annoyed by "snot". He was silent and walked around as black as night.

His mom would only ask him briefly: “Son, how are you?” – “I'm fine.” “He was always fine, even if he had been not so good a hundred times,” says Liudmyla.

The older brother went to serve after the younger one

War changes people. Andrii Verkhohliad grew older and wiser. But, as before, he “cheerfully shot orcs”.

“He gained a greater understanding that we must win so that his daughter, wife, and nephew, who was just born, would not know what war is. He wanted his generation to be the last,” Andrii's mother cries.

After the full-scale invasion, he defended Kyiv Oblast, in particular, defending the approaches to Brovary and Boryspil.

“After February 24, there was no way to talk. I only asked: ‘Are you alive?’ For a week they didn't sleep at all, and he lost weight. One journalist later wrote that she was filming a movie about the defense of the capital and that only their well-coordinated team could have held off the attack on the city. And that Andrii didn't want to be filmed, but asked to have soldiers in the shot, that it was their merit,” the woman says.

Andrii's older brother Dmytro also went to war. Back in 2017, when the younger one was first wounded. He was so affected that he left the penitentiary service in one of the prisons in Zhytomyr and signed a contract with the 95th Brigade. From a major, he became an ordinary infantry soldier. The brothers did not meet at the front. It happened that one would leave Avdiivka and the other would replace him. Their mother begged: “Give me six months of peace so that you both can be here.”

In the spring of 2022, when part of Chernihiv Oblast was occupied, Dmytro and his four companions from the electronic warfare unit were in a hideout. Surrounded by enemies, but invisible to them. They were transmitting the coordinates to our guys where they were shooting.

“Sometimes he would call me via satellite: ‘Take cover, it's flying in your direction!’ He managed to do it even before the air alert was announced. And I was with my older daughter-in-law and my newly born grandson in Zhytomyr. It was cold, early spring. I asked: ‘Dima, what did you eat today?’ – ‘I found one candy in my pants.’ I asked Andriusha: ‘Drop some food from the copter for him.’ – ‘Mom, do you realize what you're saying? They'll be spotted.’ – ‘I understand everything, but this is my child.’”

Ms. Liudmyla says that her younger son pulled the older one out. The corridor was broken through and they came out.

Their mom didn't talk to the boys much, Andrii sometimes just sent a “+” in the messenger. And when he would call her, he would divert her attention from the fighting to writing: “How much work, I'll have to fill out paperwork all night.” “I'm so tired of this Soviet system.” – “Andriusha, when you get to the top, you'll cancel everything.” – “Who will let me?” he laughed.

On June 22, 2022, a warrant for a service apartment was delivered to the apartment in Bila Tserkva where Andrii Verkhohliad's wife Maryna and daughter Yulia live. With flowers, with congratulations. She informed her husband by phone: “Look, it's ours.” He was happy and found a craftsman to tighten the handle on the window.

A person in uniform may not return

On the morning of June 23, Lyudmila Petrivna went to work. She complained to her colleagues that for some reason Andriusha hadn't texted her today. And then she received a call from a journalist friend of her son's. In a moment, the kindergarten shook with a scream: “No, no, it's not true!”

Maryna Verkhohliad realized that her beloved husband was dead on the evening of the 22nd of July. She, a military medic, saw a message in the battalion's common chat room: “the best is gone”.

Andrii did not get in touch, his friends were silent. In the morning, she received a message from the military enlistment office: he was killed at the Svitlodarsk bulge in a battle with the Wagner Group mercenaries.

Those who were taking the wounded from the battlefield told her about a difficult battle. Commander Verkhohliad ran to save his men, they had to hold the defense. It was being breached. The man was wearing both a helmet and a bulletproof vest. But a fragment hit him in the neck. He died instantly. They managed to take away the wounded, and when they returned for the dead, the Russians were already there.

For several days, his companions launched a quadcopter over the battlefield and saw the body of their commander. But there was no way to get there. On the 10th day, the guys gave a call: whoever is willing to take the risk, we are going to pick him up. They couldn't wait: it was summer, and it was hot.

They broke into the enemy's lair with three armored personnel carriers. The enemy's eyes were popping out of their heads: how could they do that? In a few seconds, they picked up the body of the commander and rushed back, and they were gone.

Liudmyla Verkhohliad went to the identification with her eldest son. They were not allowed to go to the morgue by his companions. They took out a photo of a hand in a tactical glove. A personalized watch and a wedding ring. The rings in the form of a crown were custom-made for him and his wife. That's how they recognized him.

Andrii’s mother was asked if she would mind a funeral service at St. Michael's Cathedral in the capital. A lot of people would like to come. She agreed. And there were indeed many of them: in the cathedral, at the funeral in Zviahel, in letters and posts on Facebook. They grieved with her. They called her Andriusha “legendary, the best commander, the pride of the brigade” and also “brave and cheerful, noble and intelligent, open and witty, bright and light, calm and collected, decent and courageous,” “a man who took care of his people and brought Ukraine closer to victory every day.” People's Artist of Ukraine Ada Rogovtseva called him her friend.

On the fortieth day after Andrii Verkhohliad’s death, his daughter, who was 2.5 years old at the time and did not understand why everyone was crying, was told that her father would now live on a cloud.

“I was reading her a story the other day, and there were clouds. And she looks at them: ‘This is my mom's, this is mine, and this is my dad's. He is there, isn't he?’ A few days ago, Maryna came back from maternity leave to work. She was preparing Yulia for kindergarten. She looked at her mom shaking: ‘Are you going to take me? Are you sure you're going to take me?’ Liudmyla's voice is trembling with tears. “In all the photos, her dad is in uniform, but she’s never seen her mom in it. It is so stressful for her that a person in uniform may not return. So my daughter-in-law couldn't stay at work until the evening and ran to pick her up.”

She keeps thinking that the brigade will return and her son will be with them

Last year, on December 11, Andrii Verkhohliad's mother received the Hero of Ukraine gold star instead of her son. She felt joy, respect, and pain... None of her friends congratulated her, because what words can you find?

“He deserved it. But such a huge price for it. And the thought that keeps drilling into my brain: why didn't he get it himself? As well as the shoulder straps of a lieutenant colonel, whose rank was recently awarded posthumously. There is also a petition to name a street in Kyiv after him. This is an honor and pride for every mother. But it would be better if it didn't happen...”

The woman does not believe that her son is gone. She keeps thinking that the brigade will return and Andrii will be with them. The voice of reason is sober: don't indulge yourself. But her soul says: I want to!

“People often ask me: How are you? How did you stand it? Such stupid questions, by God. How would you feel after the death of a child? How can I say that in the evenings I feel so overwhelmed that I want to howl? How can I say that the pain is tearing my insides apart? So I answer: it's fine. I realize that 22 children look at me every day and I cannot explain to them why I am sad. And they ask. And I have to hold on. I have to stay focused for the sake of my grandchildren because they need a smiling grandmother, a grandmother who wants to play. And I live for them. This strength comes from the feeling of Andrii's presence and support. When he was alive, he never gave me a reason to cry, and he wouldn't want me to cry now,” the woman's voice fades.

“Does it make me feel better to realize that his life and death were heroic? He went to defend me, his children, his friends, and Ukraine knowing that anything could happen. Including death. And he got these principles from me. I raised him that way. And now I accept these thoughts from him. And I live by his words. The circle has closed.”

***

The mother of the Hero of Ukraine Andrii Verkhohliad brought roses to his grave. She pulled others out of a cut 6-liter bottle. They were frozen. She broke through the ice and put fresh ones in the water.

In a few days, the ritual will be repeated. And then again and again... and again.

Author: Nataliia Mazina