Victory Chronicles-DAY 985

On the evening of 3 November, a Russian air strike resulted in 15 injuries in Kharkiv, Ukraine, including four police officers. Targets of the air strikes included a supermarket, residential high-rise buildings, and non-residential premises. The window glazing in the buildings on the market territory was damaged. The police reported that around 22:30, an enemy cluster bomb exploded near a cemetery in the village of Dergachi, damaging a household but causing no casualties. Investigative teams and explosive experts are on-site collecting evidence of war crimes. Criminal proceedings have been initiated for violations of the laws and customs of war. This attack follows a previous attack where Russia targeted the village of Kivsharivka, destroying the entrance of a residential building.

According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, over 700,000 enemy soldiers have been neutralized by the Defence Forces. The enemy combat losses from February 24, 2022, to November 4, 2024, include approximately 700,390 personnel, 9,193 tanks, 18,538 armored combat vehicles, 20,121 artillery systems, 1,245 MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket Systems), 994 air defense systems, 369 aircraft, 329 helicopters, 18,280 UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) of operational and tactical level, 2,629 cruise missiles, 28 ships/boats, 1 submarine, 28,237 motor vehicles and tankers, and 3,587 units of special equipment. 

At night, the enemy attacked the residential areas of Kherson once again. A residential building was destroyed in one of the neighborhoods, and a fire broke out at the site of the hit. Rescuers had to return to extinguish the fire several times due to repeated attacks by the occupiers. Despite all the threats, the fire was extinguished.

Operators of the 412th separate battalion of unmanned aerial systems NEMESIS successfully detected and destroyed an Osa anti-aircraft missile system in the Luhansk sector. The anti-aircraft system was designed to engage air targets at low altitudes. The Unmanned Systems Forces conducted the operation. 

Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets refuted a Russian information operation about prisoner of war (POW) exchanges aimed at destabilizing Ukrainian society and undermining Ukrainians’ trust in their government. Lubinets responded on November 2 to claims from Russian Human Rights Ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova and Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Spokesperson Maria Zakharova falsely accusing Ukrainian authorities of attempting to sabotage the POW exchange processes and deliberately refusing to return all Ukrainian POWs from Russian captivity.

Lubinets directly called on Moskalkova to provide Ukraine with a list of all Ukrainian POWs whom Russia is willing to return and reiterated that Ukraine is ready to accept all lists of POWs from Russian authorities, accusing the Russian government of holding up the POW exchange processes. Russia and Ukraine have engaged in more frequent POW exchanges since the start of Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk Oblast in August 2024 following a months-long period of minimal POW exchanges, during which Ukraine had to reportedly construct a third POW camp for Russian POWs in Ukraine. Ukrainian officials also reported at the time that Russian authorities were the cause of the significant delays in POW exchanges.

Kremlin information operations centered around POWs also likely intend to distract from the Kremlin’s own efforts to disrupt the POW exchange process and from consistent reports of Russian human rights abuses, including executions, against Ukrainian POWs.

Staff Sergeant Vitalii “Darling” Bastryhin died on 6 April 2024 near the village of Kutuzivka, Kharkiv region. The enemy’s unmanned aerial vehicles hit the staging area and the fighter sustained life-threatening injuries. The defender would have now been 50 years old.

Vitalii was born in the Russian village of Galonki. Later, the family moved to Kharkiv. After completing the 8th grade of secondary school, he entered Krasnohrad Medical School, where he received a paramedic degree. He worked as a paramedic in an ambulance. After his military service, he worked at the ambulance substation No. 2 in Kharkiv. Later, he changed his profession and entered the Law Faculty of the Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University. After graduation, he worked for 13 years at the customs office in Kharkiv. Later, he went abroad and worked as a healthcare professional at a rehabilitation center in Poland and later at a hospital in the Czech Republic.

On 10 April 2019, he joined Ukraine’s contract military service and was appointed as a medical instructor of the mortar battery of the 3rd Operational Company on APCs of the 6th Battalion of the 3rd Brigade of the Colonel Petro Bolbochan Operational Brigade of the Eastern Operational Territorial Unit of the National Guard of Ukraine. Vitalii met the full-scale invasion on the frontlines.

The fighter received several awards for his service. The President of Ukraine awarded him the medal ‘For Saved Life’ and the badge ‘For Courage in Service’ by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.

‘Vitalii was a very kind and loyal person. He was very caring as a son, loving and responsible as a husband and father. For his colleagues, he was an example and a professional whom they could turn to for advice,’ said Olga Tsypchenko, the deceased’s cousin.

‘My son loved medicine, he was a doctor from God, he saved the most hopeless patients, including his grandmother. His brothers loved him very much and gave him the nickname Darling. During his tactical medicine training in Kyiv, Canadian instructors named him the best and presented him with the Purple Heart award. At his son’s funeral, his fellow fighter, whom he had once saved, kept repeating: ‘He saved me, but he died…’. There were inscriptions on the funeral wreaths from his comrades-in-arms saying ‘To the Best Doc’,’ said Larysa Andriivna’s mother.

The defender was buried on the Walk of Fame in Kharkiv. Vitalii is survived by his mother, wife, two sons and relatives.

*Vitalii’s story on the Heroes Memorial – a platform for stories about the fallen defenders of Ukraine.

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