Former MP Oleh Barna killed at front

The information about Barna's death was confirmed to ICTV by Oleksii Dmytrashkivskyi, spokesman for the Tauride Defense Forces' Joint Press Center.

According to preliminary data, Oleh Barna was killed yesterday, on April 17, the day before his birthday. Today, April 18, he would have turned 56.

The circumstances of the death have not yet been reported.

Meanwhile, the leader of the European Solidarity party, Petro Poroshenko, said that Oleh Barna's brother Stepan, who is also fighting at the front, said that the brigade has not confirmed Oleh's death and no one has seen his body.

“So let's wait and believe in the best, that Oleh is alive. God help us!” Poroshenko added.

His friends, colleagues, and comrades-in-arms have posted condolences on Oleh Barna's page. In particular, the co-chair of the European Solidarity faction in the Verkhovna Rada, Iryna Herashchenko, said that a few weeks ago she met with the deceased's brother, Stepan Barna, who is also fighting at the front. According to him, “Oleh Barna fought near Vuhledar.”

“He was a Maidan activist, who volunteered to go to the front in 2014, then had a 'break' in the Verkhovna Rada, where he desperately defended the truth as he understood it. He was an altruist, a big kid, very sincere in his love and hate. He loved his parents, wife, children, brother, and friends. And Ukraine! Above all,” she wrote.

MP Volodymyr Ariev wrote: “Oleh Barna was sharp. His actions were spontaneous, politically unverified as for a people's deputy, but sincere. He could curse a 1+1 journalist, and Zelenskyy himself, who was not yet president, was rude to him. But he was a patriot. He was... It sounds so unusually scary.”

Oleh Barna was a native of the village of Nahirianka in the Ternopil region. He is a  former member of the Ukrainian Parliament from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc. He was a public and political figure, human rights activist, teacher, military officer, and sergeant of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. 

He participated in Euromaidan in the Chortkiv district of the Ternopil region and in Kyiv. He was wounded in the head and his right shoulder was broken as a result of the confrontations on February 18, 2014 in Mariinsky Park.

In July 2014, he volunteered to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the ATO zone, was a fighter with the 128th Detached Mountain Infantry Brigade and a mortar team commander (pseudonym Uncle Oleh).

At the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he volunteered for the front.