Sviatoslav Palamar - Know Your Own

The maple stands for Canada, the birch for Russia, and the true symbol of Ukraine is the kalyna, the guelder rose. That is how Sviatoslav Palamar chose his call sign. Deputy commander of Azov, in 2022 he held Mariupol and Azovstal until 20 May. Hero of Ukraine.

Why Kalyna?

In 2014, at Azov’s recruiting centre, Sviatoslav Palamar was told: “Friend, pick your call sign.” He thought it over: the maple makes people think of Canada, the birch of Russia, but the true symbol of Ukraine is the kalyna, the guelder rose, found in songs, chronicles and legends of the Cossack era. So he became Kalyna.

From machine gunner to deputy commander

Palamar was born in 1982 in the small town of Mykolaiv in Lviv Oblast (not the big port city of the same name). He studied at the Lviv University of Trade and Economics and served in the armed forces during a break from his studies. He worked as commercial director of a company and took part in the Orange Revolution of 2004 and the Revolution of Dignity of 2013–2014. In August 2014 he joined Azov, a special-purpose unit of the National Guard, as a private machine gunner and later rose to deputy commander.

A voice of Mariupol’s defence

From the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Palamar defended Mariupol alongside Azov’s commander, Denys Prokopenko. When the city was besieged, he recorded video appeals: he described the defence and said the garrison was ready to leave the encirclement together with civilians, the wounded and the bodies of the dead. On 8 May he and other Azovstal defenders spoke to foreign journalists at a press conference. On 20 May, on the command’s orders, Palamar was among the last to leave the steelworks and was taken prisoner by Russia.

Coming back

On 21 September 2022 he was freed in an exchange together with Prokopenko, Serhii Volynskyi and other commanders. They stayed in Türkiye until July 2023, and it was there, on 3 October 2022, that Palamar received the Gold Star of a Hero of Ukraine. “I am very proud to be Ukrainian,” he said, calling it an award for his soldiers and for the whole Ukrainian people.

Why it matters

Back home, Palamar continued to serve in Azov. In 2026 he was promoted to colonel; as of October 2026 he is deputy commander of the National Guard’s 1st Azov Corps. The man who took a symbol of Ukraine as his call sign became one of the voices the world heard from encircled Mariupol.