Tributes have been flowing in from across the country for Ukrainian opera singer Vasyl Slipak, who was killed in fighting in eastern Ukraine.
The 41-year-old singer turned volunteer solider was killed by a sniper in Donbas at about 6 a.m. on June 29.
Hundreds of people converged on Lviv’s Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church for a funeral service held for the performer on July 1 before his burial at Lychakiv Cemetery.
Other cities, including Dnipro and Kyiv, have also paid tribute to Slipak. An informal shrine to the opera star has been set up by the public on the capital’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti.
Ukraine’s Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan, who had known Slipak since childhood, posted a eulogy for the singer on Facebook.
He described Slipak as an optimist who had a smile on his face no matter how hard things got. He said the stage was his calling.
“He didn’t simply sing, he was the hero of the stage,” Omelyan wrote.
“And that’s how he fought too.”
President Petro Poroshenko awarded Slipak the Order for Courage of the first grade, posthumously, for selfless service to the nation and for demonstrating courage while protecting state sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
Slipak left behind a successful career at the Paris Opera two years ago to fight for his homeland, in the ranks of the volunteer battalion of the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist Right Sector organization.
Right Sector spokesman Artyom Skoropadsky said Slipak was respected within the group and had never sought any special treatment.
“Everyone knew who he was, everyone knew that he had a million other opportunities… but he chose to come and defend Ukraine,” Skoropadsky told Kyiv Post.
“Of course he was respected because this person abandoned everything, the opportunity to make big money… and went to be a simple machine-gunner on the front with an unregistered battalion that is also being persecuted by the government.
“The guys that he fought alongside, many of them were just normal, simple guys, and here is this star fighting alongside them as an equal, not demanding any special treatment.
“At a psychological level, it was understandably nice for the guys.”
Slipak developed a passion for singing during his childhood and went on to attend the Lysenko Music Academy in Lviv.
During his schooling, Slipak travelled to perform in France for two years before receiving an invitation to be a permanent soloist for “Opéra de la Bastille” in 1996.
In 2014 he returned to Ukraine to take part in the EuroMaidan revolution.
Taking on the military call sign “Meph” in reference to his favorite aria of Mephistopheles from the opera Faust, Slipak then joined the fight against Russian-backed insurgents in eastern Ukraine after fighting broke out in April 2014.
According to Russian media, Slipak was killed by a sniper going by the call sign “Sailor.”
During an interview aired by a Russian television channel, “Sailor” told a journalist that at a distance he could not identify who he was firing at.
“You can’t see faces, it’s just a figure that’s firing,” the sniper said.
He claimed he only learned about the death of the Ukrainian opera singer when reading the news online.
The sniper said he had been hidden near the Russian-backed separatist checkpoint where his platoon was based when his comrades had come under attack.
He said he had taken the decision to kill the machine-gunner, Slipak, himself.
