As they saw in the New Year of 2022, life had never been better for Yuriy Hlodan and his wife, Valeria. Their first child was due any day and they were both hugely excited about starting a family.
Furthermore, Yuriy was thriving in his new job, having taken the unusual step of swapping his role as a talented lawyer for his first love of cooking, working as a chef. There was so much to look forward to in the months and years ahead for the young couple who had met as students.
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But then the war came to Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 and everything changed. Russia’s all-out invasion of their neighbor has led to up to a million deaths but arguably no family has suffered more than the Hlodans. This is their tragic story told with the help of Yuriy’s parents, those who served with him on the frontline and the couple’s friends.
Yuriy Hlodan was born in the Kherson region of southeast Ukraine on Jan. 23 1992, the first child for Yuriy Hlodan Sr., an entrepreneur, and his wife Nina. When Yuriy was aged two, the family moved to the Zaporizhzhia region where he went to the local school before being selected to attend a special school for gifted children.
From that moment onwards, he was always an A student. “He was a kind, thoughtful, sweet boy, but also a leader. He was always surrounded by friends who looked up to him,” his father told me.
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After leaving school, he won a place at the prestigious Odesa National Law Academy. It was while he was a law student that Yuriy, then aged 21, met his future wife in 2013, while she was studying journalism.
“Valeria was smart – an intelligent young woman and also, like our son, very kind. It was love at first sight – they were just made for each other,’ Mrs. Hlodan said. They shared many hobbies including travel, photography and a love of museums.
After graduating in law, Yuriy worked as a lawyer while his wife worked as a public relations manager. Their home was a one-bedroom flat in Odesa and Valeria’s mother, Lyudmyla, lived in a bigger, two-bedroom flat nearby.
After dating for five years, Yuriy, who was 5 feet 9 inches tall, handsome and bearded, proposed to his wife, who had long fair hair, blue eyes and a fine features, while visiting a sacred place on an island, Khortytsia, on the Dnipro river. There was never any doubt that she would say “yes.”
The couple married in a civic ceremony in Odesa on Aug. 30, 2019 – they organized a lavish occasion for 40 guests, mostly friends who had been students with them years earlier. “It was a magical day,” recalled Mrs. Hlodan, dressed in an oatmeal polo-neck jumper and long tweed skirt.
Some time before their first child was born, Yuriy gave up his role as a lawyer. His love of cooking went back to his student days and he decided to make his passion his vocation, accepting a job with the bakery Make My Cake. Yuriy had a reputation for making the best croissants in Odesa and he created elaborate cakes for special occasions.
The Hlodans’ first child was born on Jan. 4 2022 – a girl, named Kira. Yuriy, who was at the birth, described the occasion as “the happiest day of my life.”
“Kira was the center of his universe,” Mrs. Hlodan, 52, said of her granddaughter and son. Mr. Hlodan, 53, dressed in a round-neck blue jumper and dark green trousers, added: “He adored her and he wanted to be the best possible father to take care of her.”
As tensions mounted between Russia and Ukraine, Yuriy and Valeria did not believe that – in the 21st century – Vladimir Putin would order the invasion of a peaceful European nation. But that was exactly what happened on Feb. 24 2022.
Whereas some Ukrainians quickly fled their country, the Hlodans were convinced there would soon be peace and that everything would return to normal. With a seven-week-old baby making travel difficult, the couple stayed in Odesa.
When the attacks on the city intensified, they spent a month living with friends who had a basement bunker where they could all shelter during the bombings. However, by late April 2022, with fewer Russian attacks, the Hlodans and their daughter decided to move into the bigger flat belonging to Valeria’s mother.
It was here, in the fourth-floor flat, that the three generations were living on April 23, 2022 when a Russian missile struck. At that time, around 11 a.m., Yuriy, who was on a day off, had popped out to the shops. Yuriy’s only sibling, his younger sister Anastasia, was on her way to visit the family when the missile struck.
Everyone close to the family blames one man for the tragedy: Vladimir Putin.
Yuriy returned to the apartment block to see that it had been badly damaged. Pushing past the emergency services, he frantically dug up the bodies of his wife, 28, and mother-in-law, 53, with his own hands but they were both dead. Unable to find three-month-old Kira, he began to hope that she had been thrown to safety. However, eventually the emergency services found her dead body too. Five other residents died in the blast.
Mrs. Hlodan, who had been alerted to the situation by her daughter, rang Yuriy and eventually got through to her son. “He told me that his family no longer existed,” she said, as tears rolled down her cheeks. “I can’t imagine what he must have seen with his own eyes.”
The day after his wife, daughter and mother-in-law were killed, and while collecting personal belongings from the partly destroyed flat, Yuriy described his wife to a journalist: “She was perfect, such a person could only be given to you once in a lifetime. It was a gift from God.”
In the days and weeks after the bombing, Yuriy was inconsolable. “He lost a part of himself and he lost the purpose for life,” his mother said. The funeral for the three generations of women took place in Odesa and on that day Yuriy was in a daze, overcome by grief.
Yuriy’s parents are convinced that he almost immediately made the decision to enroll in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but he spent some time choosing which unit he should join. His parents did not want him to serve because they feared he would be killed.
However, on March 1, 2023 Yuriy joined the 3rd Assault Brigade, insisting he wanted to be an infantry soldier fighting on the frontline. “His motivation was more than simply revenge: he wanted to defend his country and its people,” Mrs. Hlodan said. Her son had described Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, as a terrorist.
Dmytro Hudz, a boxing coach who had joined the military as a volunteer in April 2022, transferred to the 3rd Assault Brigade in March 2023, where he soon met Yuriy. Coming from Odesa, Dmytro knew about the tragedy of the three generations of women killed in the missile strike but he did not recognize Yuriy as linked to it.
Their unit was fighting in eastern Ukraine and initially 10 soldiers lived in a three-bedroom flat in Kramatorsk. “To start with, Yuriy was not very talkative. He always seemed nervous, agitated, stressed,” Dmytro told me.
Then one day, while on the front line, Yuriy, who was known by his military call sign of “Nabat,” confessed to Dmytro, who had the callsign of “Mongol,” about his family’s tragedy. Dmytro responded by giving him a hug and after that they were the closest of friends. “When I got to know him, I found he was a decent, open, kind, loyal, attentive man,” he said.
Both men found sharing a flat with eight other soldiers too messy and so they soon rented a small, third-floor flat of their own in Kramatorsk. They kept it neat and tidy and his friend benefitted from Yuriy’s cooking skills.
Despite having no military experience, Yuriy soon became a skilled and brave soldier. “It was interesting to observe how Yuriy grew into a warrior. He was such a good shot that he was considered for sniper training,” Dmytro said. Yuriy was also strong and fit, regularly going to the gym when he was not on the front line.
Yuriy was involved in several brutal battles in and around Bakhmut in the summer of 2023, always emerging unscathed. Many of his comrades believed that, due to a mixture of instinct and luck, he would never be killed or injured. “He saved a lot of lives in combat, dragging several wounded comrades to safety. He was also good at giving medical aid but he always had a knack of avoiding the shells,” Dmytro said.
However, Yuriy’s luck ran out on Sept. 12, 2023 when, in the rank of senior soldier, he was killed in battle, aged 31, on the day that Dmytro was having an operation on his injured shoulder. After coming round from surgery, Dmytro rang a comrade to ask how Yuriy was and he was told he had gone missing in battle and there was no chance he had survived.
It was the military who, on the morning of Sept. 15, relayed the sad news to Yuriy’s parents that he was missing, feared dead. He had last been seen attaching a tourniquet to his own injury, before rolling into a shell crater where it is believed he was deliberately targeted by a Russian drone.
Days later, Dmytro drove all his friend’s possessions from their flat to Yuriy’s parents’ home, where he consoled them over the apparent loss of their son. However, it was not until Oct. 30, 2023 that Yuriy’s decomposed body could be recovered from the battlefield and the results of DNA testing confirmed on Jan. 24, 2024 that it was Yuriy who had died.
Dmytro, aged 36 and with a dark beard, who has now left the army, still visits his friend’s grave every weekend. “I have the warmest, fondest memories of Yuriy. He wasn’t just a comrade; he was like a brother to me. He was a wonderful character with an inner light and a big heart.”
Yuriy’s father began to cry as he spoke of his son’s death: “We were desperate with grief. He was the best son anyone could have wanted. All my friends were jealous that I had such a wonderful son. He set an example to others. I was so proud of him.”
After Yuriy’s funeral on Feb. 22, 2024, attended by family, friends and comrades, he was buried in a grave next to his wife and daughter in the town of Avanhard, near Odesa, where the couple had hoped to build a family home. “Yuriy loved his family and would have wanted to be close to them in death,” his mother said.
Artem Syritka, 33, a construction manager who met Yuriy and Valeria when they were all students and who attended their wedding and Yuriy’s funeral, said of his close friend: “He was really cool. He always stood out because he was a leader. We all felt we were under his wing and he helped us become men who all looked out for each other. Yuriy and Valeria complemented each other – they were so well-suited and they loved each other very much.”
Why am I telling this story now? In August of last year, I interviewed Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s First Lady, exclusively for The Mail on Sunday. In her hour-long interview she spoke of the most tragic story of the war to her personally. She said that in the early days of the war, three generations of females had been killed in a missile attack on Odesa.
The man of the family – the husband, father and son-in-law of the three victims – had then joined the Armed Forces but he was then killed on the front line, she said. Without identifying the family by name, the First Lady described the events as “a very tragic story” and that they had shocked her “to the core.”
Shortly afterwards, I began inquiries to identify the family and, eventually, to interview those close to Yuriy and Valeria Hlodan in order to tell their story ahead of the third anniversary of the all-out war. I felt humbled hearing the full story, all the more so when Yuriy’s parents thanked me so warmly for telling this tragic tale which, in my view, epitomizes the disastrous consequences of this brutal war.
Yuriy, Valeria and Kira will never be forgotten. In Odesa, there is a street that has been named in the memory of the Hlodan family and there are other memorials for them in southeast Ukraine too.
Everyone close to the family blames one man for the tragedy: Vladimir Putin. Mrs. Hlodan said of the Russian leader: “He needs to be accountable for everything he has done, all the misery he has caused to our family and to many other families too. Regardless of how this war ends, he needs to be brought in front of an international court.”
More than a year after her son’s death was confirmed, her grief is still raw. With tears once again rolling down her face, she said: “As a mother I still can’t believe all this has happened. Even now, every day I am waiting for my son to come home.”
Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, author and pollster. For more information on his work, visit lordashcroft.com. Follow him on X/Facebook @LordAshcroft.
An edited version of this story appeared on Feb. 15 in the Daily Mail.
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