Renowned Ukrainian pilot Vladyslav Voloshyn died after shooting himself in his apartment in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv on March 18. His family was at home at the time of the incident.
Voloshyn’s wife who heard the shot called the ambulance. Voloshyn, 29, was still alive when the medics arrived, but died later in hospital.
According to the police, Voloshyn shot himself with a Makarov semi-automatic pistol with no license number. The pistol was seized and sent for examination. He leaves a wife and two children.
Voloshyn, a native of Luhansk Oblast, graduated from Kharkiv Aviation Institute and had been serving in the 299th Tactical Aviation Brigade, a formation of the Ukrainian Air Force based at Kulbakino, Mykolaiv Oblast. In summer 2014, Voloshyn took part in Ilovaisk battle when his low-flying Su-25 ground attack jet was hit near the village of Starobesheve on August 29, 2014.
In late 2014, Voloshyn was the victim of false accusations spread by Kremlin propaganda media that he had shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014. Dutch investigators have found that the airliner, which had 298 people on board, all of whom were killed, was in fact shot down by a BUK anti-aircraft missile.
Voloshyn flew more than 30 combat sorties until he resigned from the armed forces in 2017. In December, he was appointed the acting director of Mykolaiv airport.
The investigation by a local journalist Andriy Lokhmatov published in late January shows that Voloshyn was pressured by the local administration into unlawfully signing documentation regarding procurement tenders at Mykolaiv Airport. Initially, he refused to agree but ended up signing the documents after being appointed an acting head of the airport.
Lokhmatov also published the screenshots of Voloshyn’s correspondence with a friend, in which the former pilot said he wanted to resign because he understood he had broken the law and felt “suicidal.” Relatives claimed he had looked depressed prior to the incident.
In the meantime, one of the deputy heads of Mykolaiv administration Valentyn Gaidardzhy said in a statement on March 18, that he was “sorry to see that some people have started to use this tragic event in their vile manipulations, instead of simply expressing their condolences.”
Mykolaiv city police have launched a homicide probe into Voloshyn’s death.
The Kyiv Post met with Voloshyn in Mykolaiv, a city with almost 495,000 residents, late on Feb. 27. He arrived after a day of work at the airport, slightly overwhelmed but energetic. He did not complain about his work at the airport, saying merely that it was quite different from army service. He also said he hoped that the airport would soon open its doors to visitors after the renovation is completed.
Voloshyn mainly told the Kyiv Post about his part in Ilovaisk operation, when the Ukrainian military had to use aviation to help encircled soldiers break out of the besieged town of Ilovaisk in the two military columns. He was on a combat sortie of two Su-25s. Voloshyn and the pilot of the other plane had just destroyed Russian-led forces heavy armor and a couple of military trucks near Starobeshevo in Donetsk Oblast when he was nearly blinded by a flash of light in his cockpit. In a moment, Voloshyn understood that his aircraft had been hit as the plane turned over in the air and started losing altitude with every second.
Voloshyn managed to eject and spent two days in a private house on the northern outskirts of Starobesheve village. On Sept. 1, 2014 he escaped from the village disguised as a civilian and successfully got through Russian-led forces’ checkpoints on his way to the village of Rozdolne where there was a front-line hospital of the Ukrainian army.
“I wasn’t scared (when it had happened). A person who had almost accepted his death on Aug. 29 couldn’t be scared anymore,” Voloshyn said during the interview. “However, from that moment, I felt that a piece of me had died there… I was ready to die when my plane turned 180 degrees in the air. But if I survived back then, it means that I’m needed in this life for something.”
Read the full story of the Ukrainian pilot Vladyslav Voloshyn in a Kyiv Post series about 2014 Ilovaisk battle this April.
