Renowned Ukrainian bandura player Ostap Kindrachuk passes away in occupied Crimea
Ukrainian bandura player Ostap Kindrachuk passed away in Russian-occupied Crimea on Wednesday, 18 December, at the age of 87.
Source: a post on Ostap Kindrachuk’s Facebook page
Details: "Ostap Yuriiovych passed away last night. Eternal memory!" a post on his Facebook page reads.
Journalist Vasyl Chepurnyi revealed that although Kindrachuk was born in Halychyna, a region in the west of Ukraine, he stayed in Crimea to work as a sailor after receiving medical treatment on the peninsula. In 1955, he began playing the bandura, a traditional Ukrainian stringed instrument, and performing in a local folk ensemble. He also researched the history of the Cossacks in Crimea and Kuban and appeared in several documentaries.
Quote from Chepurnyi: "The Ukrainian army left Crimea, but Ostap Kindrachuk the kobzar [bard] stayed. He used to play on the Yalta embankment, dressed in vibrant Ukrainian attire, making a statement: this is Ukraine."
More details: Roman Koval, President of the Kholodny Yar History Club, said Kindrachuk was still performing on the Yalta embankment in September. In November he celebrated his 87th birthday.
"He was still playing on the embankment in Yalta in September, continuing to be an eyesore for the FSB. The occupiers repeatedly harassed him and chased him away, but people stood up for him," Koval added.
Ostap Kindrachuk was born in the village of Kotykivka, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, and spent his childhood in the Carpathians. Later he moved to Kazakhstan, where he worked as a tractor driver. After nearly losing a hand to frostbite, he moved to Yalta for medical treatment and decided to stay there. He worked as a sailor at the local port before going on to study at the Batumi Maritime Academy in the Department of Navigation. He eventually became a captain, spending 35 years at sea.
Kindrachuk began playing the bandura in 1955, studying under Oleksii Nyrko, a historian of the kobzar tradition and founder of the Bandura Museum in Yalta. Nyrko also led a bandura ensemble at the local medical workers' club in Yalta.
Ensemble. After losing his job at the port in 1993, he started performing on the streets of Yalta.
He collected books on Ukrainian Cossack history, researched the kobzar tradition, and left a lasting legacy of resilience and dedication to Ukrainian culture.
"I sang with a bandura on the Yalta embankment under both the Soviet and Ukrainian governments, I'm singing under the current government, and I will continue to sing with the sole thought that Ukraine 'is not dead in Yalta'," Kindrachuk wrote in a letter to Koval.
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