A funeral for a tattoo artist-turned-soldier shows why Ukraine won’t capitulate to Moscow

KYIV, Ukraine — They filed in silently, a long line of young men and women, mostly dressed in black, many wearing T-shirts inscribed with the motto: “Ukraine or death.”

Elaborate tattoos colored their arms, their legs, and even an occasional shaved head. Most were clutching long-stemmed flowers and many couples were holding hands tightly. They proceeded slowly toward the entrance of the elegant St. Michael’s Cathedral of the Golden Dome, a symbol of Kyiv.

The youthful mourners had come to pay last respects to one of their own, the legendary Roman Tarasyuk, only 30, who had fallen in close combat on the eastern front

Roma, as he was known, was an unusual military officer, a prominent tattoo artist who volunteered to fight immediately after the 2022 invasion and rose to command his unit with exemplary courage.

Before the war, he was at the center of a network of artists, musicians, and cultural activists — along with self-labeled “anti-fascist football hooligans” — who socialized and made art together.

Yet, Roma was also a Ukrainian Everyman, one of hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of volunteers from every walk of life who rushed in 2022 to defend their country as civilians or soldiers. Civilian volunteers often do high-risk jobs like rescuing the elderly from besieged villages, helping rebuild destroyed homes, or delivering drones and medical supplies to frontline units.

Many early military volunteers like Roma have risen to become officers and are still serving, with a steadfast patriotism that has enabled the Ukrainians to hold back the huge Russian army for more than three years.

His life and death are a stunning rebuke to President Donald Trump’s grotesque comparison of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine to a quarrel between schoolboys, as if Ukrainians are fighting over stolen iPhones.

The slogan he created for his unit — “Ukraine or Death” — was meant to signify just what this war is about.

It meant much more, his friends told me, than the obvious call to fight for family and country. Rather, it reflected an irrefutable truth: Unless Ukrainians can push back the Russian invaders, an imperialist Moscow will destroy their language, their religion, their culture, and their very existence as a sovereign state.

Just as Russia is doing, now, in the lands it already occupies.

Roma “dyed his hair, made tattoos, played loud music and, if necessary, he would fight for the freedom to do so,” wrote a war correspondent friend, Philip Mahlzan, in a bittersweet eulogy for United24 Media.

A skater who loved punk rock and joking with his friends, Roma almost always fought on the front lines, rising to the rank of sergeant. Together with comrades, he created a unit he labeled the “Kayfariki,” meaning “those who enjoy life,” which became part of the 78th Air Assault Regiment. On the side, he set up a clothing brand that sported the “Ukraine or Death” slogan.

Mahlzan recalled how Sova (Roma’s call sign, which means “owl”) extricated him and 13 colleagues from almost certain death when they were surrounded by Russians on the front line a year ago. This time his friend was not so lucky. “This is Ukraine. You drink beer, and your friends die. They might die in their sleep, or get hit on the head by Russian drones. Or they fall in battle,” Mahlzan wrote in a brusque description of Ukraine’s new normal.

Roma’s funeral last Wednesday was only one tragedy in a tough couple of weeks for Ukraine, despite the brilliant drone Operation Spiderweb that its SBU intelligence unit carried out inside Russia last week. Moscow has sent unprecedented numbers of missiles and drones into Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, while the Kremlin is readying a large offensive across the border from the northern city of Sumy. (This is a response to Trump’s refusal to punish Putin for rejecting a ceasefire, not, as the president describes it, a retaliation for Operation Spiderweb.)

Friends of Roma, talking quietly as they streamed into the church, spoke of other recent deaths of friends on the front lines. “We don’t have time to get together socially any more,” I was told by Kseniia Kalamus, a well-known volunteer activist. “But we meet up at funerals.”

Inside the crowded Ukrainian Orthodox cathedral, its gilded arches decorated with multicolored paintings of the saints, as Roma’s friends fell totally silent, the priest leading the memorial service summed up the crowd’s visible pain: “Again and again we are gathering here, gritting our teeth with hatred to our enemies. This pain seems to be not leaving our hearts any longer. How many more of our warriors will give their lives for the life of Ukrainian nation, for our freedom? … This evil war is taking the best ones.”

How many more of our warriors will give their lives… This evil war is taking the best ones.

A young man in front of me, wearing a Kayfariki T-shirt, hugged his partner. She rested her head on his shoulder, wiping her eyes.

As his voice gathered depth, the priest declaimed a message I have heard over and over during my visit to Ukraine, one that sums up why Kyiv cannot afford to capitulate to Moscow’s demands for total surrender in the so-called peace talks promoted by Trump.

“The enemy came to our land not just to destroy our houses, they came to take the best of what we have: our faith in our country. We are an independent sovereign state. Our anthem has such words: ‘Ukraine hasn’t died.’ These are not just words, they reflect all the essence. It is the fate of Ukraine that for many centuries we have been fighting for existence of our nation.

“Recently we have often been asked: ‘What for?’” the priest continued. “Dear guests, I have given my last farewell to more than a thousand of our dead soldiers. … What for? For our future. They saved the lives of all of us. Remember Irpin, Bucha … all the atrocities Russians conducted, raped kids aged 4 to 12 … just imagine what an evil enemy we are facing. … We are fighting to get our history back. We will get our territories back. That is why I am asking now, as a sign of respect to the real heroes of Ukraine, I am asking everybody to kneel …”

And the hundreds of mourners in the church knelt. And knelt again by the casket, as they filed past, one by one, handing their flowers to military guards who would deposit them in the grave.

But the story doesn’t end here. Outside the church, where clusters of Roma’s friends gathered for a final military salute, there was palpable anger when speaking to an American about his death.

Most of the mourners were bewildered that a U.S. president would make excuses for a mass killer, while turning his back on Ukraine.

I asked a woman in black, her tattooed arm holding calla lilies and a photo of Roma, what he would have said to Trump. I thought she might shout. But she choked back her anger and retorted: “He was a person who fought for freedom and equality. He would tell the American people that the real fight for democracy, for democratic values, is here, now.”

Then she turned on her heel and said, “I don’t want to talk any more.”