Dmytro Krapyvenko, who used to be the Editor-in-Chief of The Ukrainian Week and is also in the military, writes a heartfelt tribute to our friend and colleague, Dmytro Sinchenko. Sinchenko, a journalist from Kropyvnytskyi and a writer for The Ukrainian Week, tragically lost his life on the front lines.
Dmytro was a handsome man. And I don’t mean just his physical appearance, as I am not much of an expert on that. I’m talking about the harmony and integrity he carried, the connection between form and content, between his words and actions. Certainly, his dark brown curls hinted at a bit of a Cossack feature, a Southerner, something proud about them, but what truly mattered was what lay beneath this exterior. The war unleashed by Russia has revealed an unfortunate truth: we have no shortage of men who easily fit the image of Mr Testosterone but shy away from the call to arms. They prefer flexing their muscles in gyms and sprinting brilliantly for 100 meters at the sight of a recruitment patrol. Dmytro Sinchenko was different. His strength wasn’t in his appearance but in his actions.
It was in 2020, during my time leading The Ukrainian Week, when I was busy organising a network of regional correspondents. Kropyvnytskyi, Dmytro’s hometown, boasted quite a few talented journalists, so finding a correspondent there wasn’t too challenging. The decision quickly landed on Dmytro Sinchenko. I’ll admit, initially, I was a bit wary when I learned he identified not only as a journalist but also as a political scientist. I held some prejudices against the latter: often, those in this field can be difficult to approach, arrogant, and overly informed, and they turn their noses up, treating journalists like their ‘little brothers’.
Dmytro didn’t have any of these shortcomings. We didn’t need lengthy conversations or explanations. He was a man of action, a businessman in the truest sense of the word. With all the necessary skills to professionally cover the local elections (our main aim for collaboration), Dmytro’s texts hardly needed much correction from my colleagues and me–they were exceptionally well done.
He lived what he wrote about and wrote about what he lived through. He lived through his city’s name change (previously, Kropyvnytskyi was called Kirovohrad), the process of long-awaited de-Sovietisation, and the covert revenge attempts by the former members of the Party of Regions (the political party of the fugitive president Viktor Yanukovych). For Dmytro, it wasn’t merely journalistic work, topics to cover, or extra income from a national media outlet. He was an active participant in local change, not just an indifferent outside observer.
After leaving The Ukrainian Week, I kept working with him. It wasn’t about doing reports and analyses anymore; it was about managing large amounts of information and investigations. Dmytro took on this challenge, and I knew it would be done well, on time, without needing to beg or worry about deadlines. Unfortunately, this only happened once. Because the next day, war broke out.
Since then, we have only written to each other on Facebook. I looked back at that correspondence: it was October 16, 2022. Dmytro sent me a video of their car in flames, hit by a Russian mine. I asked, ‘Are you okay?’ He replied, ‘Yes, I was elsewhere at that moment.’ To a civilian observer, this dialogue might seem too brief. But in wartime, the most important question is whether you are alive and unharmed; the rest is trivial.
Dmytro’s last Facebook post is dated August 19, 2023, and his final article for The Ukrainian Week was published, symbolically, on Ukraine’s Independence Day, August 24. Then came the darkness, long months of his “disappearance” in combat, and it wasn’t until last weekend that we learned of his death, with the funeral soon to follow. Dmytro has left a painful void among the soldiers in his regiment, in the journalistic community, and among the civic activists in Kropyvnytskyi. Do we even realise the magnitude of what we’ve lost? Filling this void will not be an easy task.
I don’t believe in abstract patriotism, where people profess love for Ukraine as a whole but shy away from mentioning their hometown (or village), embarrassed by their humble provincial roots. Dmytro loved his city, and his love was palpable. He loved Ukraine, and this love was equally tangible.
I don’t know if Dmytro had the chance to write his will. It seems unlikely, but for me, and I hope this rings true for many others, the essence of his will can be found in these words I discovered in Dmytro’s notes dated July 23 of last year: “Damn, we are in dire need of courageous and skilled fighters, motivated and intelligent. We lack individuals capable of facing the Russian enemy; even the entire [military–ed.] system is as outdated as it was in the Soviet times. Yet, we must strive to reform this system. The very best among us rushed to the frontline from the very beginning [of the war–ed.], and their numbers have dwindled significantly. Each day, we become fewer. Others, who did not immediately head to the battlefield but held fast to their dignity, which would not permit them to hide, joined us a bit later. Yet, their ranks, too, are thinning… Undoubtedly, we lack weapons. But what we lack most of all are people. For if there is no one to wield the weapons, they become meaningless.”
