A Combat Medic’s Quest to Change Tributes to Fallen Soldiers

Her funeral would be “awesome,” the young Ukrainian combat medic said, if it went as she had planned.

Mourners should wear a traditional embroidered shirt known as a vyshyvanka, the medic, Iryna Tsybukh, said in a video message to a friend outlining her wishes for her funeral if she was killed on the front line. Soldiers could come in army fatigues. And everybody should learn 10 “meaningful” Ukrainian songs to sing around her coffin.

“Everyone will sing and learn something,” she said in her message, smiling. “In short, my funeral won’t be in vain.”

Her request proved to be prescient. Ms. Tsybukh was killed on May 29 on the front line near the city of Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, days before her 26th birthday. Her family and her battalion have chosen to withhold the details of how she died. At memorial and funeral ceremonies, thousands of Ukrainians in vyshyvankas and army uniforms sang her songs.

For Ms. Tsybukh, who also managed educational projects and was a journalist, the guidance she provided for her funeral was more than just personal preference. Yes, she wanted people to sing to relieve their sorrow over her death, but also to more fundamentally change how Ukraine remembers its fallen soldiers.