1993–2022
Stepan Tarabalka
MiG-29 fighter pilot
A village boy from western Ukraine learned the trumpet at music school, then at 13 left for a military boarding school so he could fly. Major Stepan Tarabalka defended Ukraine’s sky in a MiG-29 in the first weeks of the full-scale war. Killed in 2022; Hero of Ukraine (posthumously).
Key accomplishments
- Graduated from the Ivan Kozhedub Kharkiv University of the Air Force (2014)
- MiG-29 fighter pilot in the Ukrainian Air Force’s 114th Tactical Aviation Brigade
- Flew many combat sorties from 24 February 2022, defending Ukraine’s sky
- Hero of Ukraine (posthumously, decree No. 148/2022)
Trumpet, piano and the sky
Stepan Tarabalka was born in 1993 in the village of Korolivka near Kolomyia, in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of western Ukraine. He went to school in neighbouring Kornych and then to the Mykhailo Hrushevskyi gymnasium in Kolomyia, and at the same time to a music school, where he learned the trumpet and the piano. But what he dreamed of was the sky. At 13 he entered the Carpathian military sports lyceum in Nadvirna, and later the Ivan Kozhedub Kharkiv University of the Air Force, graduating in 2014.
A MiG-29 pilot
After graduating, Tarabalka served in the 114th Tactical Aviation Brigade and flew the MiG-29 fighter. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, he took to the air again and again, flying many combat sorties in the first weeks of the war.
On 13 March 2022 Major Stepan Tarabalka was killed in an air battle over Zhytomyr. He was 29.
How he is remembered
Stepan was made a Hero of Ukraine posthumously and was buried in his home village. Between 2022 and 2024 streets in Kolomyia, in Yahotyn near Kyiv and in Korolivka were named after him. In 2023 the Kolomyia lyceum where he once studied opened a museum to the pilot. That, the school remembers, is where his dream of the sky began.
