SEPTEMBER 12, 1967 — APRIL 22, 2022
55 YEARS, JOURNALIST, PRODUCER
Vira Hyrych died from a Russian missile striking her apartment. Shevchenkivskyi district of Kyiv was under shelling on April 28. Vira said that her home on the second floor was safe, the missile would not hit it. But it did. Her body was recovered from under the rubble of the residential house she lived in. Vira was found in the morning, thanks to the sound of her cell phone. Her friends, time after time, dialed the number, and the rescue team used it as a beacon.
Vira’s little car is still parked outside the house. A few years back, she drove her colleagues to the village of Nemishaieve. She told them how to look for information on occupied territories. In March, as the Kyiv suburbs were engulfed in fighting with the occupiers, Vira posted on Facebook the videos of the capital’s empty streets and desolate subway, which served as a bomb shelter for the city residents.
Vira had worked for Ukrainian media for over twenty years, TV channels «STB», «1+1», «Espresso» among them. Her final professional destination was «Radio Svoboda», where Vira was a producer. Her last report was a story of an 87-year-old pensioner who survived the Holocaust, and her 94-year-old husband, the siege of Leningrad survivor. The elderly couple lived in Mariupol. The events that unfolded in the city upon the 2022 Russian invasion, according to the couple, were more barbaric than what they had lived through during the Second World War. It was imperative for Vira to tell this very story to the world.
Her parents are both in their early 80s. She had always been taking care of them; in complete isolation, they spent a whole month under occupation, with no means of communication, no light, water and gas. Vira wrote that her mother’s old village-type stove was saving her mom and dad’s lives.
According to Vira’s friends, they know what quiet dignity and actual sincerity look like. Gentle and resilient beyond belief at the same time. To figure out what really matters, all you needed was to just stick around Vira and watch the way she lived. Ingenious, yet very simple; open and caring. The decisions she made were next to perfect and so laidback, yet there was so much talent, wisdom and effort behind them. Her friends felt like she could take on anything in this world. She always had plans «A», «B» and «C». Vira’s friend says that even though Vira’s out of sight and out of reach now, she had defeated the ominous despicable darkness. Up above, she can see and hear everything, she is with her loved ones. She will always be.
Her friends used to say about Vira that she was an angel in the flesh. Her colleagues never heard her as much as raising her voice. Ego was a non-existing thing for Vira, she always found genuine purpose of her life in helping others. A terrible pit is now where Vira’s apartment used to be. Silent emptiness instead of her voice. Attempting to engulf Ukrainians, this darkness mindlessly killed Vira, and mutilated the ones is survived by – parents, friends, her son. She was 55. Vira was bid farewell to on May 3, in St. Michael’s monastery.
