Here is the English translation:
Sixty-three-year-old **Volodymyr Kovalevskyi** was killed on March 26, 2022, in Mariupol. His wife, **Olha**, and stepdaughter, **Anna**, were also killed that same day.
Volodymyr was born in the village of Hrintal (known as Michurine until 2024) in Kalmiuske District. He studied at Mariupol School No. 56 and later graduated from the Mariupol Mechanical and Metallurgical Technical College. By profession, he was a locomotive mechanic.
He served in the Navy for three years. During that time, he retrained as a ship mechanic and went on to spend 14 years working as a warrant officer and chief engineer aboard a submarine.
> “In childhood, he was a true older brother to me. He read books to me, drew with me, and helped me with my homework. He introduced me to wrestling, which he also practiced with his friends. He taught me how to stand up for myself.
> My brother loved the sea from an early age. He knew virtually everything about ships. He had an excellent knowledge of history, not only of Ukraine. He was fascinated by warriors—from Native Americans, Varangians, and Vikings to Cossacks. He also loved sports.
After leaving the service, he worked at the Ship Repair Yard in Mariupol. He later earned a degree by correspondence from Kyiv National Economic University named after Vadym Hetman. A few years before the full-scale war, he worked at Azovstal as a freight train yardmaster,” recalled his younger brother, Petro Kovalevskyi.
In the 1990s, Volodymyr met Olha, and the couple married. Together they raised Anna, Olha’s daughter from her first marriage.
“He always helped Anna with her studies. He loved her very much, and she loved him too. My brother was sociable and kind-hearted. People called him a ‘walking library’ because he read so much. He had a great sense of humor. His life was one continuous adventure. It was always interesting to be around him,” Petro said.
Volodymyr lived with his wife and stepdaughter in the Skhidnyi neighborhood of Mariupol. After the full-scale invasion began, they cared for an elderly acquaintance living in an apartment building at 26 Morskyi Boulevard.
His younger brother recalled:
“The first time I came to their basement shelter, I found him sitting in a corner reading a book by candlelight. Later, laughing, he told me how he had been frying pancakes outside when shelling suddenly started, and he ran up the stairs carrying the frying pan with a pancake still cooking on it.”
When the shelling intensified, the elderly woman was moved into the basement shelter. A few days before the tragedy, she was successfully evacuated. Volodymyr and his family remained in the building on Morskyi Boulevard, although they were planning to return to their home in the Skhidnyi neighborhood.
On March 26, 2022, Russian forces once again shelled the five-story building. People in the basement began to suffocate. Anna ran outside into the courtyard but came under a Grad rocket attack.
> “A woman who had been sheltering in the basement with my brother’s family said that Anna had been killed and that everyone needed to escape as quickly as possible. At that moment, Volodymyr suffered a heart attack. He had undergone heart surgery in the autumn of 2021 and had a valve implanted. He lay down on the floor and could no longer get up. His wife stayed with him,” Petro added.
What happened next in the basement remains unclear. Acquaintances who later saw Volodymyr’s body in the morgue said that he had suffered a gunshot wound. His younger brother noted that the family had taken all their savings and gold with them into the shelter.
Later, a Russian aircraft dropped another bomb on the building. Twelve people in the basement were killed.
Volodymyr’s body and those of other murdered Mariupol residents were recovered from the rubble in May 2022. The bodies of his wife Olha and stepdaughter Anna were never found.
Volodymyr Kovalevskyi is survived by his younger brother and three nieces.
At 9:00 a.m., Ukraine observes a nationwide minute of silence. The Donetsk Regional Military Administration and the Memorial platform “Killed by Russia” honor the memory of Donetsk region residents killed by Russian aggression.