For the Popovych family, the war began on April 21, 2014. That very day, on the occasion of Valentyna Ivanivna’s 50th birthday, a family celebration was interrupted by a phone call. Her son was ordered to report for duty immediately. Soon afterward, he left for Donetsk region, toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, where the first armed clashes of the Russian-Ukrainian war were unfolding.
From then on, the front became part of his life. First came rotations in the Anti-Terrorist Operation zone, followed by the hottest fronts of the full-scale war: Bakhmut, Pokrovsk, Izium, the Kursk region, and other areas. Denys went wherever he was needed.
On May 23, 2026, Colonel Denys Popovych of the Security Service of Ukraine’s Special Operations Center “A” was killed while carrying out a combat mission in Donetsk region. He was 42.
On June 22, a month after his death, Denys Popovych was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine and the Order of the Gold Star.
But behind the military rank, awards, and positions was the person he had been to his family, friends, and comrades long before the war. A son, husband, father of two daughters, athlete, friend, and mentor. And the boy his mother remembered as smiling in almost every photograph.
“We probably don’t have a single photograph in which he isn’t smiling,” Valentyna Ivanivna says.
Denys was born on July 1, 1983, in Lutsk. His father, Mykola Ivanovych Popovych, was an Honored Master of Sport of the USSR in canoe and kayak racing and a member of the Ukrainian national team.
Sport was not a casual pastime in this family. It was a way of life. His mother recalls that Denys began swimming practically from his first month of life. At the time, she devoted considerable attention to hardening her son.
“I really wanted him to grow up healthy and strong. He was born weighing 4.5 kilograms — a strong, handsome, sturdy little boy,” she recalls.
In their small bathtub at home, Valentyna Ivanivna gradually lowered the water temperature and taught her son to immerse himself. Denys could hold his breath for almost 40 seconds. As he grew older, the bathtub was no longer enough. Then came a children’s swimming pool, school training, and morning and evening practices.
In seventh grade, his coach even suggested that the family send the boy to a sports boarding school in Kyiv, where he could train seriously in swimming. They did not. Denys was the only child in the family.
Sport, however, never disappeared from his life. Even when a move made it more difficult to get to the swimming pool and he had to reduce his training, he never abandoned swimming completely. After enrolling at Lutsk State Technical University, he returned to the pool.
“He always had that desire in him. From his very first year, he immediately went to the pool and wanted to train,” his mother recalls.
Student competitions followed, then Ukrainian championships. In 2001, at the Universiade in Dnipro (then Dnipropetrovsk), Denys achieved the qualifying standard for the title of Master of Sport of Ukraine in swimming. His results attracted the attention of the Dnipropetrovsk team, and the possibility of his moving there was even considered.
He trained with the team and went to high-altitude training camps. But at the time, his family could not afford accommodation in another city, and the plan did not come to fruition.
Later, sport temporarily took a back seat. Denys graduated from university and worked at the Volyn Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In a professional reference that his mother kept, he was described as physically fit, sociable, well-educated, interested in swimming and a wide range of subjects, and respected by his colleagues.
What sounds dry in an official document has a simple explanation for his mother: Denys had always been someone who could not stand by and do nothing.
After university, Denys Popovych joined the army. He served in a special company of the Separate Presidential Regiment. A reference from his military unit described him as a disciplined serviceman, physically fit and demanding of himself. It also noted that he was proficient with weapons, maintained a high level of physical fitness, was respected by his fellow servicemen, and had many friends.
Later, Denys decided to try his hand at the Security Service of Ukraine. He passed the psychological selection process and became a member of the “Alpha” special unit. For him, this was more than a prestigious job. According to his mother, he felt that it was his calling.
Denys eventually became an officer, rose to the rank of colonel, and served as deputy head of a department of the Security Service of Ukraine’s Special Operations Center “A” in Volyn.
Alongside his professional development, another of his defining qualities continued to grow — his athletic discipline.
If swimming had taught him endurance, service and war demanded an entirely different level of physical and psychological readiness. Denys began training seriously in practical shooting, competed in tournaments, and organized sporting events. In February 2024, he achieved the qualifying standard for the title of Master of Sport of Ukraine in practical shooting.
In other words, Denys held the title of Master of Sport in more than one discipline. He remained an athlete even after service and the defense of Ukraine had long since become the central part of his life.
After the war began, Denys understood with particular clarity how important military training was. There was no modern, properly equipped facility in Volyn where servicemen and veterans could systematically train in firearms skills. Denys decided to create one.
Together with four comrades, they pooled the plots of land they had received as combat veterans. That was where the shooting range was established. Later, a civic organization — the “Operator” Sports and Shooting Club — was created on its basis, with Denys Popovych as its head.
His mother remembers one of their conversations:
“I said, ‘Son, you have two children growing up. Maybe you should think about providing for them somehow.’ And he replied, ‘Mum, do you understand how important this is right now? We need to train in good, proper conditions. Because lives depend on it.’”
Military personnel, veterans, and club members trained at the range. For Denys, this was not simply a hobby. He constantly improved the facility, invested his time and his own money, and continued training himself. He practiced practical shooting and officers’ triathlon and took part in veterans’ competitions.
He left behind numerous diplomas, certificates, and awards. Among his state decorations was the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, III Class, along with numerous departmental awards. He was also twice presented with firearms as an award.
On June 22, 2026, President of Ukraine posthumously awarded Denys Popovych the title of Hero of Ukraine and the Order of the Gold Star for personal courage and heroism demonstrated in defending Ukraine’s state sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Valentyna Ivanivna particularly emphasizes Denys’s attitude toward the people he served alongside. He did not see command as a distance between a superior and subordinates. Even with a high rank, he wanted to remain close to those entrusted to his care.
“He told us, ‘I will never do that. I will always be with them,’” his mother recalls.
Even during rotations, when he could not physically be there with everyone, he kept track of the situation by phone and online, checked on the men, and worried about them. For him, responsibility for his subordinates did not end when the working day was over.
In his unit, Denys sought to develop not only physical but also intellectual readiness. He read military literature himself, was interested in Stoicism, and recommended books to others. Then he might ask what they had read, ask them to retell it, and discuss it with them. In essence, he taught them that a soldier’s strength lies not only in physical endurance and the ability to use weapons.
“He devoted himself so completely to this civic organization, to the ‘Operator’ shooting club. He created a brotherhood there,” Valentyna Ivanivna says.
In April 2014, Denys went to eastern Ukraine for the first time. From then on, rotations became a constant part of his life. Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Volnovakha, and other areas. After the full-scale invasion began, there were new combat missions, new locations, and new dangerous stretches of the front.
He did not leave the service. He did not leave sport. And he did not leave his people.
Denys carried out his final combat mission in Donetsk region. On May 23, 2026, near the settlement of Zolotyi Kolodiaz, Pokrovsk district, a Russian attack drone struck the positions of Ukrainian defenders. His mother says Denys and a fellow serviceman were in a dugout when the explosion occurred. A fire broke out and ammunition detonated. Because of intense shelling, the bodies of the fallen could not be evacuated for several days.
After his identity was confirmed, Denys was buried in Lutsk. A farewell ceremony was first held in Kyiv and then in his hometown, at the Holy Trinity Cathedral. Many people came to say goodbye. He now rests in the Lutsk cemetery alongside other Ukrainian defenders.
Beyond service and sport, Denys had another world — his family. He and his wife, Maryna, raised two daughters.
His mother speaks about their relationship almost in a whisper, as though afraid that a careless word might touch something deeply private.
“They loved each other immensely. They had two little girls, and he simply adored them,” Valentyna Ivanivna says.
Denys loved reading and was interested in photography, cars, and programming. He loved music, especially classical music.
A year before his death, he unexpectedly confessed to his mother a childhood regret. He had once wanted to attend music school — to learn guitar — and he also loved the violin. As a child, he did not get into music school, became embarrassed, and never told his parents. His mother learned about it only many years later.
Already a grown man, a successful athlete, defender, and colonel, he had preserved within himself the boy who had once wanted to learn music. Perhaps it is this small detail more than anything else that brings Denys down from official references and military awards into ordinary human life, where he was a good son, a loving father, a devoted husband, and a loyal friend.
After Denys’s death, Valentyna Ivanivna speaks not only about her son. She speaks about those who fought alongside him and who also never returned. She says it is important to her to look people in the eye and tell their stories. To make sure their names do not gradually dissolve into the statistics of war.
“That is our main task, the task of the living: to make sure they are not forgotten,” she says.
Denys left behind many documents, medals, diplomas, photographs, and memories. But perhaps most important is what he left in other people: in the athletes he trained and competed with; in the military personnel for whom he created training opportunities; in the comrades who followed his example; and in the family for whom his absence has now become a permanent part of life.
And in his two daughters, who will one day, perhaps, remember their father and ask about him not only through photographs and awards. They will be told about a man who knew how to overcome himself — in sport, in service, and in everyday work. About a man who never regarded his knowledge and abilities as resources meant only for himself. If a training ground could be created, he created it. If someone could be taught, he taught them. If he needed to go to the front, he went.
And perhaps that is why his mother’s final words sound so simple and so poignant:
“If he had been given more life, he would have done so, so many good things. I know that for certain.”