1963–2014
Serhii Kulchytskyi
Head of National Guard combat training
A major general who in spring 2014 trained the National Guard's first volunteer battalions, raised from Maidan activists, and went with them to the front. He was killed near Sloviansk on 29 May 2014, the first Ukrainian general lost in this war. Hero of Ukraine, posthumously.
Key accomplishments
- Served in Ukraine's National Guard from 1992, rising from deputy battalion commander to general
- Head of the National Guard's directorate of combat and special training
- In spring 2014 formed and trained the National Guard's first volunteer battalions, drawn from Maidan activists, and went with them to the front
- Hero of Ukraine (posthumously, decree No. 544/2014 of 20 June 2014) - the first Ukrainian general killed in the war with russia
The general who trained the volunteers
Serhii Kulchytskyi was born on 17 December 1963 in the German city of Weimar, where his father, an officer in the Soviet armed forces, was stationed. His own career belonged to Ukraine: after a Suvorov military school in Ussuriysk and a higher military command school in Blagoveshchensk, he served in the marine infantry, then in 1992, as the National Guard of newly independent Ukraine was just taking shape, transferred in as a deputy battalion commander in Ternopil.
“Soldiers applauded a general”
Over the next two decades he graduated from the National Defence Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv, rose to major general and became head of the National Guard’s directorate of combat and special training. In spring 2014, after the Revolution of Dignity, it was Kulchytskyi who built and trained the Guard’s first volunteer battalions, drawn from former Maidan activists - and he went to the front with them himself. There he lived in a tent with his soldiers and ate what they ate. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov later recalled visiting the front line and watching soldiers spontaneously applaud the general: something, he said, he had never seen before.
On 29 May 2014, near Sloviansk in the Donetsk region, the Mi-8 helicopter carrying Kulchytskyi was shot down as it flew back from Mount Karachun, where it had just delivered food and rotated troops. He was 50. He became the first Ukrainian general killed in the war with russia. A decree of 20 June 2014 posthumously made him a Hero of Ukraine.
Why it matters today
In spring 2014, when Ukraine suddenly needed new defenders, Serhii Kulchytskyi helped former Maidan activists become soldiers, and that is how the National Guard’s first volunteer battalions came about. He showed that a general does not send people into battle but goes with them, which is why his soldiers applauded him. His life is a lesson for anyone who leads others: respect is earned by example. His name is carried by the National Guard battalion he began to form and by streets in at least 17 cities, among them Sloviansk, where a street was renamed for him in 2024.
