"Stay the course": the story of Roman and Leonid Butusin, Russian-born brothers who were killed defending Ukraine
In the summer of 2014, after Crimea had been occupied by Russia and the war in Ukraine's east was escalating, two men boarded a sailboat made from a kayak on the coast of the Sea of Azov near Dolzhanskaya in Russia's Krasnodar Krai. Oleg Butusin, a 43-year-old Russian citizen, and his eldest son Roman, then 17, set sail in this homemade vessel for the Ukrainian coast.
"We stitched the sail and put in a mast, centreboards and a rudder – everything was shipshape," Oleg recalls. "We wanted to reach the Berdiansk Spit. We were curious to test whether it was even possible to get to Ukraine this way. After a few hours, the wind started to carry us towards Novoazovsk, where the 'monkeys' ['DPR' militants] were already present, and we were forced to go back to Kuban." [The "DPR" ("Donetsk People's Republic") is a self-proclaimed Russia-backed quasi-state formation in Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast – ed.]
By the time of that attempted maritime reconnaissance mission, Oleg and his wife Tatyana had already decided to move to Ukraine with their children. They felt there was no safe place for them in Putin's Russia.
Oleg was born in Buryatia and grew up in Russia's Far East. In 2004-2005, he headed a Cossack community in Vladivostok, and even then he was advocating active resistance to the Kremlin regime.
"I realised that we needed to prepare people for a future underground resistance struggle in Primorsky Krai," he says. "We used to go to shooting ranges, learned how to navigate in the wilderness, and set up our own local cells."
In 2008, a criminal case was opened against Butusin on charges of "inciting ethnic hatred". While on the federal wanted list, he drew Russian media attention in 2013 as a "farmer-partisan" who had wounded traffic police officers in a shootout and then evaded capture by hiding in the forests.
In 2014, Oleg crossed the border from Russia's Kursk Oblast into Ukraine, where his family was already waiting for him. This family of committed Russian nationalists later settled in Halychyna (Galicia), the historic heartland of the Bandera movement. [Stepan Bandera (1909-1959) was a radical Ukrainian nationalist and a key figure in the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists – ed.]
In 2015, Oleg Butusin joined the Right Sector volunteer nationalist movement. On 9 March 2022, two of his sons – 24-year-old Roman, with whom he had attempted to reach Berdiansk by sea, and 20-year-old Leonid – were killed in action in the village of Lukashivka in Chernihiv Oblast.
This is the story of the Butusin brothers, Roman and Leonid: ethnic Russians, Ukrainian citizens, and soldiers in the 58th Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They were born in Vladivostok, more than 10,000 km away from Kyiv, and were posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine for their role in one of the key battles fought in Chernihiv Oblast in March 2022.
Rubbish on Lenin's head
"Do you believe in God?" Oleg Butusin asks as soon as I step across the threshold of his home. "The Lord will put everything right."
For the Butusin family, it seems, God was always the only true authority. As the Soviet Union was collapsing, Oleg took at least one of the defining problems of modern times – television as an object of worship – into his own hands. At the age of 18, he got rid of the TV. As a result, his children had no chance of growing up under the influence of Kremlin propaganda.
"Roman and Lyonya (Leonid) grew up understanding that we were living in a Russia occupied by the Bolsheviks, ruled by godless people. And when everything kicked off [in 2014], we all knew which side we were on [Ukraine's]," Oleg recalls.
When the family moved to Ukraine, Roman was 17 and Leonid 13. In their new country, the adventurous brothers found what they had long been seeking – freedom. Yet even back in Russia, under Putinism, their independent spirit and refusal to conform had set them apart from most of their peers.
"They grew up wearing combat boots," their father says.
One night, without their parents' knowledge, the brothers took a ladder and set off for a Lenin statue to place a plastic bag of rubbish on Lenin's head. This happened in the town of Kolchugino in Russia's Vladimir Oblast. The monument stood in a small square surrounded by apartment buildings.
Roman was 13 at the time, Leonid only 9. Their political stunt was a success.
"My ancestors had Cossack roots," Oleg explains when describing his sons' dislike of the Reds. "My father was anti-Soviet. My grandmother used to sing Kuban Cossack songs. We had relatives who were repressed as counter-revolutionaries. So there was never any common ground between our family and the communists."
According to the rules
"Don't refuse to serve, but don't go looking for service either." This old saying was one Oleg Butusin often repeated to his sons when first Roman and later Leonid decided they wanted to join the military.
The older of the two brothers was not even 18 when he packed his things, ready to join the Azov Regiment [now the Azov Corps – ed.]. But his parents persuaded him not to: the war wasn't going anywhere, and he needed to get a higher education first. "What's the point of running off to the front at your age, when you have no experience and no knowledge?" his mother Tatyana asked.
Roman quickly mastered Ukrainian and enrolled at the Hetman Petro Sahaidachnyi National Army Academy to train as an artillery reconnaissance officer. However, he was forced to leave the academy in Lviv after developing an ulcer during his studies. He later became a student at the National Aviation University in Kyiv.
His younger brother Leonid attended a military sports school in Nadvirna before studying law at Odesa Mechnykov National University.
The brothers were always together – in military service, in their outlook on life, and in the fights they got into defending their beliefs. When the family lived in Moscow Oblast, the Butusin children had often had to defend their dignity with their fists in the very heart of what their family regarded as its age-old enemy.
"That was the last Russian school they went to, in Porechye," Oleg recalls. "To give you an idea, there was a military settlement there belonging to the [Russian] Foreign Intelligence Service. Naturally, the local population reflected that. Roma got into an argument with a boy who was two years older than him. Then the younger ones came to help – Lyonya and Lyuda [one of the sisters – ed.]."
The brothers found themselves defending the family's honour after moving to Ukraine as well. On one occasion, Roman ended up in hospital after a fight in Prykarpattia.
"My husband and I were working in the forest at the time, guarding and maintaining the area. The boys used to help out too. And a conflict arose with some local people. Roma heard about it and went to confront them on his own. He wasn't afraid. It was five against one," Tatyana recalls.
"Romchyk and Lyonya were kind and caring," their mother continues. "Once Roma brought home a cat he'd found in the mountains. When he saw a stray dog in Kalush that had been scalded with boiling water, he took it all the way to Ivano-Frankivsk to rescue it. And he rushed to donate blood when he learned that a local girl had been diagnosed with leukaemia.
Lyonchyk could also stand up for justice with his fists. He wanted everything to be done fairly, according to the rules. That's why he chose to study law. He hated injustice. He never bowed to anyone," Tatyana says.
"Lyonya was the life and soul of the party. He was like a cat, you know. Always smiling. He and his brother never cried. They were afraid of nothing. Absolutely nothing," says Oleg.
A spark for life
They met in a hospital. Roman Butusin was recovering from being beaten up when Olena and her sister, who had moved from occupied Crimea to Ukraine's west after Russia's annexation of the peninsula, brought some food to his ward.
"Our families are friends. Roman's parents asked us to bring him meals over the weekend," Olena recalls. "That's how we started talking. He was straightforward and sincere. Roma was an adventurer, but in the best possible sense of the word. I don't quite know how to explain it, but there was an incredibly powerful spark for life in his eyes.
He and his brother knew so much about military stuff," she continues. "When they started serving in 2020, I still knew nothing about tourniquets, first aid kits or any of that, and they were already explaining everything to me. Roma would send me thermal-imaging photos of Donetsk Airport that he'd taken himself."
One winter, shortly before the full-scale invasion, the couple finally had an opportunity to spend time alone together. During a two-week leave, Roman and Olena travelled around Ukraine.
They visited Sumy, Kyiv and Lviv. For a few days, they secluded themselves in the Carpathians, staying in a cottage that was a 40-minute walk from the nearest village.
"It was just the two of us in that little house, with nobody else around. We fetched water from the river and heated the place with a wood-burning stove. It was so cool," Olena remembers.
"One day we were walking down through the snow towards the village when we came across this tiny kitten. I thought it was a squirrel at first – it had long ears and a fluffy tail, and it was bright orange. But it was a kitten.
I said, 'Romka, let's take him with us.' We travelled back by bus, it took several hours, and the kitten slept peacefully in Roma's arms the whole way."
The last battle of Lukashivka
The miracle that saved Ukraine from collapse in 2022 has countless faces and names – those who refused to be afraid. Among them were two ethnic Russians, Leonid and Roman Butusin, known by their aliases Leo and Rem.
On 9 March 2022, a battle took place in the small village of Lukashivka, near Chernihiv, that would prove crucial to the defence of the city of Chernihiv. In an attempt to complete the encirclement of the city, Russian forces advanced towards Lukashivka in a convoy of dozens of vehicles: armoured personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, tanks and lorries.
On 6 March, 47 soldiers from the 58th Brigade had been sent to reinforce the local Territorial Defence unit. The defenders had two tanks (one of which could not fire), an ageing Fagot anti-tank missile system and some rocket-propelled anti-tank grenade launchers (RPGs). That was it.
"I don't know how Roma managed to get a signal, but he tried to speak to me, even if it was only for a moment," Olena recalls. "As always, he was reassuring me: 'Olenka, don't worry. Better call my parents and support my mum.' He told me the enemy was bypassing them and that they were sitting somewhere in the middle of nowhere."
"It was an unequal battle on 9 March 2022, but Romchyk and Lyonka did not falter. They fought to the very end," their father says.
Despite receiving an order to withdraw, the brothers remained at their position. Using their radio, they continued helping to direct the Ukrainian artillery fire.
"They had an RPG with three rounds," Oleg Butusin recalls. "People say they destroyed an infantry fighting vehicle and a tank. They also managed to warn a local farmer who'd been helping the Armed Forces: 'Get out. We won't be able to hold Lukashivka any longer.'"
That was the last contact with the brothers. For a long time they were listed as missing in action. At the time, in early March, their father was carrying out a mission only a few kilometres away.
When it became clear that contact with his sons had been lost, Butusin tried several times to break through to Lukashivka. It wasn't until 1 April that he was able to reach the village, after Chernihiv Oblast had been liberated from Russian occupation. There he found Roman's and Leonid's bodies lying out in the open.
"Lyonya's body was riddled with bullets," Oleh recalls. "When I lifted him up, they fell out and rattled on the ground. Roma had a wound to the abdomen, apparently caused by a grenade explosion. It's possible that he blew himself up rather than surrender."
Stay the course
"Lenuska, let's adopt a child when we get the chance."
That's what Roman said to his girlfriend Olena over the phone after reading a news report about two children in Mariupol who had been orphaned when a local couple was killed.
It was left to Roman's parents to fulfil his wish after his death. Treating it as their eldest son's last will and testament, Oleg and Tatyana adopted two more children.
Now there are twelve children in their family. Living children. And two more who remain forever in their hearts – Roman and Leonid, whose portraits hang on the walls of the Butusins' home, deep in the forests of Prykarpattia.
Simba, the cat Roman rescued in the mountains, lives there too and enjoys special privileges.
"He's allowed to do whatever he likes. The other cats get thrown out of the house before they know what's happened," Oleg says.
Simba takes full advantage of the affection he receives. He squints in the sunlight as he sits on a kitchen stool. He purrs. He lounges on the children's beds. Or on the windowsill, under the photographs of the fallen warriors, Roman and Leonid.
From time to time, Tatyana takes out the family photo album – a record of her sons growing up and of the path they chose.
"The boys are our guiding light now," she says. "Usually children are supposed to follow their parents' example, but for us it's turned out the other way round. Lyonya and Roma showed us adults how we should go on with our lives.
I've been to Lukashivka, to the place where they died. Looking at the terrain, they could have turned back. But they didn't retreat. And now, as their parents, we have to keep moving forward in the same way – to stay the course and not lose our way.
Sometimes you want to close your eyes or look away so as not to see everything that's going on around you. But if the boys were willing to give their lives for truth and justice, then we must stand by our principles as well. We must not stay silent.
We often hear people making unpleasant remarks because we are Russian, because people say all Russians are bad. But our sons were true heroes – heroes of Ukraine."
Yevhen Rudenko, Ukrainska Pravda
Translated by Myroslava Zavadska
Edited by Teresa Pearce