Viacheslav Zaitsev - Know Your Own

A historian from the Khortytsia reserve, he volunteered for the airborne troops in spring 2014, and at Donetsk airport his grenade launcher annoyed the enemy so much they complained about him over the radio. Viacheslav Zaitsev defended the terminals twice and went back to the front in 2022.

The grenadier who got on the enemy’s nerves

Ukrainian soldiers at Donetsk airport sometimes listened in on the militants’ radio. Once they heard the enemy commanders complaining that some grenadier was driving them mad and had to be taken out at last. Viacheslav Zaitsev later laughed that this was his real “award”: the grenadier was him.

Viacheslav was born in 1980 in the village of Ivanivka in the Zaporizhzhia region. He studied history and then became a tour guide at the Khortytsia National Reserve, the island on the Dnipro where the Zaporozhian Sich once stood. He went on to run the reserve’s research library and later its information and publishing department. He especially loved working with children and often visited schools to tell them about Khortytsia.

Twice in the terminals

In the first wave of mobilization, in March 2014, Zaitsev walked into the recruiting office himself. He had done his military service with an airborne unit in Bolhrad, so he was sent to the 79th Airmobile Brigade. He first stood guard on the boundary with Crimea near Chonhar, and from May fought in the Donetsk region.

He defended Donetsk airport twice, in October and November 2014, in the same brigade as Valerii Chybinieiev and Pavlo Chaika. In early October he was wounded in the old terminal, but his body armor saved him and he stayed another week: by then he was the only grenadier left, and his shots silenced enemy machine guns a few dozen meters away. He was awarded the Order for Courage, 3rd class.

Historian, councillor, soldier

Demobilized in 2015, Zaitsev went back to the work he loved. He was twice elected to Zaporizhzhia city council, helped fellow veterans and kept studying the monuments of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. On 23 February 2022, the day before the full-scale invasion, he told a city council session that he had received his call-up papers. He fought on the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk fronts.

Viacheslav Zaitsev was killed on 5 October 2022 in the Donetsk region. He was 42.

Why it matters today

For years Viacheslav Zaitsev taught tourists and schoolchildren to love the history of Khortytsia and the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and when war came he stood up to defend that land himself. He had peaceful work he loved, and still he went to the front twice, in 2014 and in 2022. He showed that loving your land’s history can become the will to defend it. And he said himself that he was not alone: “there are many of us here.” Today a memorial to him stands on Khortytsia, the island he told children about.