The remains of a Dubliner missing in Ukraine since August, when he was killed by a Russian drone on the frontline, have been recovered and identified using DNA testing. The funeral of Alex Ryzhuk (20) from Rathmines in south Dublin is due to take place in the village of Kryliv, near the city of Rivne, western Ukraine, on Wednesday.
The dead man’s remains were initially unaccounted for after he went missing, assumed dead, in August 2024. However, sources told The Irish Times remains believed to be those of Mr Ryzhuk were recovered the following month.
Since then, his family in Ireland and Ukraine have undertaken DNA testing, with a laboratory in Italy crosschecking samples and confirming the remains found in September are those of the Dubliner.
As that process of collecting DNA samples, and crosschecking, continued for a number of months, Mr Ryzhuk’s body was held at a morgue in Dnipro in central Ukraine.
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As well as the funeral due to take place in Ukraine on Wednesday, in the village his family is originally from, a memorial service is also being planned for Donnycarney Church, Dublin 5, later this month - most likely Sunday, November 23rd.
Mr Ryzhuk, an Irish citizen born in the Coombe Hospital, Dublin, to Ukrainian parents, travelled to Ukraine to join the Ukrainian Foreign Legion after turning 18.
In a video posted on the Butusov Plus YouTube channel on March 23rd, he is seen speaking in Ukrainian in a military bunker in eastern Ukraine. He says he is an Irish citizen from south Dublin and does not have Ukrainian citizenship but that at home he always spoke Ukrainian with his parents.
In the video, Mr Ryzhuk says he was 17 years old when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022 and was eager to be involved in the war effort.
He says his parents confiscated his Irish passport in an attempt to stop him travelling to Ukraine but he says he applied for a new one and went to Ukraine to join the Ukrainian Foreign Legion when he turned 18.
“I tricked my parents a bit. I hope they will forgive me,” he says.
In an interview with The Irish Times in May, in which Mr Ryzhuk used his call sign ‘Irlandets’ instead of his name, he said that after training in Kyiv, he joined the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, which has gained an elite reputation and a large public following due to its presence in the hardest battles of the war. He was then deployed with the unit to Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Kharkiv.
Mr Ryzhuk was awarded by his commander earlier in the year for setting a new record for his unit by using first-person-view drones (FPVs) to hit six Russian artillery guns and kill two Russian soldiers in Avdiivka in Ukraine’s war-torn Donetsk region.
