79-year-old Viktor Kharchenko was killed on April 26, 2022, in the village of Rubtsi, Kramatorsk district. He was at home when Russian troops shelled the house.
Viktor was born in the city of Novhorod-Siverskyi in the Chernihiv region and was the second of six children. After school, he worked on the virgin lands development program and at a meat-processing plant.
At 26, he moved to Rubtsi, where he got a job as a radio line technician. There he married and helped raise his wife’s daughter, Kateryna. He lived 25 years with his beloved wife; she passed away in 2007.
In recent years, Viktor lived in Rubtsi with his stepdaughter and her children. Shortly before the village was occupied, they evacuated with her daughter and son. Viktor wanted to stay. He said: “You’re leaving for a month or two; we’ll see each other soon. I’ll plant the potatoes in the meantime. By the time you come back, they’ll be ready.”
“After some time, I called my father. He said he planted the potatoes yesterday, and today they dug them up. Meaning the shelling was so intense that nearly everything ended up on the surface due to the shrapnel,” Kateryna said. “I asked a neighbor to check on him. She told me not to worry — he always hid in the basement. Then the occupiers came, and the connection with the village disappeared.”
Russian forces entered Rubtsi on April 26, 2022. An armored personnel carrier drove down the street where Viktor Kharchenko lived, and the occupiers fired at houses.
“Maybe they didn’t like that our windows were reinforced with bags of sand and soil… They fired twice at our house. A piece of shrapnel hit my father in the head,” Kateryna said.
Villagers found him in a room on the bed, wrapped him in a blanket, and buried him near the shed. After the village was liberated by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, he was reburied in the cemetery.
“He accepted me as his own daughter. Even though we weren’t far apart in age — he was only six years younger than my mother — he had a kind soul and helped me in everything,” Kateryna said.
Viktor Kharchenko is survived by his stepdaughter, her children, and other relatives.
At 9:00 a.m., the nation observes a moment of silence. Donetsk Regional Military Administration and the Memorial platform: killed by Russia — remembering the residents of Donetsk region murdered by Russia.