From Maidan to war: Zelensky awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine to Parubiy and three other Ukrainians
1 October 14:32
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine to former Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Andriy Parubiy. The politician was shot dead on August 30 in Lviv, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
In his address , the president said that this high title was also awarded to the following:
Gennadiy Afanasyev, a Crimean activist, former political prisoner, publicist and soldier who died in 2022 near Bilohorivka;
Stepan Chubenko – a schoolboy from Kramatorsk, tortured and shot by militants in 2014;
Volodymyr Vakulenko , a children’s writer and poet killed by Russians during the occupation of Izyum in Kharkiv region in 2022.
In addition, 11 other soldiers were awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine, four of them posthumously.
The petition and the political context
In September, a petition demanding that Andriy Parubiy be posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine garnered more than 25,000 votes. The Verkhovna Rada supported the appeal to the president.
This step was not only a tribute to the politician, but also a signal of public solidarity.
Parubiy’s murder in Lviv
on August 30, Andriy Parubiy was attacked in the center of Lviv. The attacker fired about eight shots from a pistol. The politician died on the spot.
Police detained the suspect, Mykhailo Scelnikov. According to the investigation, he had been following Parubiy for a long time and was preparing the crime. After the murder, he tried to hide in the Khmelnytsky region. The head of the National Police, Ivan Vyhivskyi, said that “there is a Russian trace” in the case. The suspect faces up to 15 years in prison or life in prison.
Andriy Parubiy is one of the key participants in the Revolution of Dignity, a commander of the Maidan Self-Defense, a member of parliament of several convocations, and head of the Verkhovna Rada in 2016-2019. His political career is inextricably linked to the processes of Ukraine’s European integration.
Volodymyr Vakulenko has become a symbol of the indomitable cultural resistance – his diary, buried in his garden, became one of the documents of Russian crimes in the Kharkiv region.
Stepan Chubenko was a 16-year-old football player and schoolboy from Kramatorsk who was killed by militants in 2014. His death was one of the first known cases of public executions in the occupied Donbas.
Gennadiy Afanasyev is a Crimean activist convicted in Russia in the fabricated case of “Sentsov’s terrorists”. After being exchanged, he returned to Ukraine, fought in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and was killed in action.
