"He didn't miss a thing, fed the cats, greeted the soldiers": security guard Uncle Vova killed in Russian strike on Kyiv

Volodymyr, a security guard known as Uncle Vova, was killed in the Russian strike on Kyiv on the night of 1-2 July. He worked at a company located next to the office of the YouTube channel Iceland.

Source: Ukrainian blogger Oleksandr Baraboshko

Details: Before his death, Volodymyr saved a person – he let a young man out of the building with whom he had been sheltering from the strike, blogger Oleksandr Baraboshko reported.

"Uncle Vova didn't miss a thing. He knew everything. He fed the stray cats that had come up and kept having kittens. He saw off with us every pickup truck heading east. He greeted the soldiers. He asked about everything, even if it was none of his business – but we loved him for that too," Baraboshko wrote.

The blogger says Uncle Vova had relatives at war, including some missing in action. He commuted to work from Sumy Oblast.

During the strike, Volodymyr was inside the building where he worked.

"A Ukrainian died who did his job honestly and loved it. [...] In the final days of his life, as people have shared today, he saved a person. Another young man was sheltering from the strikes alongside him. Uncle Vova opened the metal gates to let the young man out, who ran – and that saved him. But Uncle Vova did not make it," the post reads.

"A simple, open, hardworking person – the kind of people on whom, when all is said and done, the world depends," Serhii Ivanov, a presenter at Iceland, said of the late Volodymyr.

The attack also destroyed the YouTube channel's office and a car that had been prepared for dispatch to soldiers in Zaporizhzhia.

Background:

• The Russians killed 21 people and left 86 injured – 70 of whom are in hospital – in their strike on Kyiv on the night of 12 July.
• Russia struck more than 20 residential buildings. Kindergartens, schools and research institutions were also damaged, including the Palladin Institute of Biochemistry.
• Buildings of the Kyiv Zoological Park of national significance were damaged in the attack. Turtles and crocodiles sustained injuries from the blast waves.

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