Deceased Hungarian Soldier’s Wife: “He sacrificed his life for peace for his children”

The 29-year-old Hungarian from Transcarpathia was on the last Ukrainian boat that did not surrender to the Russians during the fighting around the town of Ochakov in the south of the country. The boat was fired at by the attackers with a missile. 22 people were killed. Sándor Kis was a soldier in the Ukrainian Navy and the first Hungarian to die in the Russian-Ukrainian war. His shaken family told the tabloid newspaper Blikk about him.

This article was originally published on our sister-site, Ungarn Heute.

“He was born in Transcarpathia, but had been living with his family in Odessa for several years,” said the uncle of the deceased soldier, and further told Blikk that “He joined the Ukrainian Navy as a volunteer in 2012 at the age of 19 and served on a minesweeper during the Russian invasion of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. At the time, when the Russians ordered him to surrender, he sang Ukraine’s national anthem with his comrades. He was a true hero, and I am proud that he was my nephew. This time, too, they tried to resist the Russians, but they shot down his ship with a missile. He and 21 other people were killed.”

According to the newspaper, the Hungarian soldier had two sons. The soldier’s wife told Blikk that she cannot believe that her husband will never come home.

The widow also spoke about the death of the young soldier and said that her husband had considered military service as his vocation. They were able to talk to him a few minutes before the rocket attack. After the explosion, she could not reach her husband. She immediately turned to the army. However, her husband’s name was missing from the list of the dead, so she was taken to the hospital for the wounded. She finally found him in the morgue, where there were 12 dead, including women.

Alexander sacrificed his life for peace for his children. I believe that I have no other task than to preserve his memory and to fulfill the dream of our two little boys. Georg and Vaseli will always remember their father,”

said the woman, adding, “I am proud of my husband.”

Another family member told the paper:

He was not the first in the family to die in the war. In 2015, Sándor’s father went to fight in Donetsk and nothing has been heard from him since. He spoke of him often and was very proud of his father. He tried to find him, but could not find any information about him.”

Another soldier of Hungarian origin who died in the war was Vasil Bilak from the town of Munkács in the Carpathian foothills. He was only 22 years old.

Source: Blikk

Featured image: Ukrainian soldiers patrol near Kyiv on February 27, 2022. Photo by Alisa Yakubovich/MTI/EPA