The Russian-Ukrainian war is killing the flower of the Ukrainian nation. In particular, young people who showed great promise but whom the war never gave a chance to fully realize themselves in peaceful life. People such as 24-year-old Odesa lawyer Dmytro Lesych.
Just two months before February 24, 2022, he received a master’s degree in law from Odesa Law Academy, but had already worked as a lawyer at the Odesa Regional Center for Patriotic Education and Organization of Leisure for Children and Youth and as a lawyer’s assistant. Had he continued his career, he would undoubtedly have become an effective and principled human-rights advocate.
Dmytro was well known to Odesa civil society and took part in many direct-action campaigns, peaceful assemblies and protests. One example was the struggle against development in Odesa City Garden. His professional legal skills were directed primarily toward preserving Ukraine’s cultural heritage monuments and natural environment. Yet in many photographs — whether from the Summer Theater or other Odesa streets that concerned residents cleaned of rubbish and planted with trees — you will not see his face. “He always took on the hardest work, but never tried to put himself in the foreground so that people would notice him,” says Vladyslav Balinskyi, organizer of numerous Odesa community cleanups and tree-planting events and head of the Green Leaf NGO.
Only once did anyone manage to persuade this shy young man to speak about himself — after he had already gone to defend the country. This is his only interview, given to Green Leaf NGO lawyer Maksym Popov in August 2022.
This is how Dmytro explained his decision to join Odesa’s territorial defense on February 24, 2022: — The very existence not only of my profession but also of my state is now being decided, and the existence of such attributes of statehood as sovereignty, independence and other features inherent in modern states has been called into question.
On February 26, 2023, Dmytro Lesych began serving in the National Guard of Ukraine. The 24-year-old serviceman died on November 30, 2023 from wounds sustained on the Luhansk front. He was awarded the Order “FOR COURAGE” (Decree of the PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE No. 96/2024).
A lane in Odesa’s historic center — formerly Admiral Nakhimov Lane — has been named after Dmytro Lesych.