KYIV, UKRAINE, Jan 11 — Ukraine is saying goodbye to poet and author of Poems from the Loophole Maksym Kryvtsov, call sign Dali, who died on Sunday, January 7. The funeral began at St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery and ended at Maidan Nezalezhnosti.
- Maksym was 33 years old.
“I wrote a text and would like to read about Maksym as a poet. While preparing for this day, flipping through our previous emails, covering the first year of his participation in the Russian-Ukrainian war, I was looking for words to address all of you in this difficult time. I was looking for the right words – his words. The words about how Maksym was filled with pride and spirit when he saw the footage of the liberation of Mariupol and decided to join the Ukrainian Volunteer Army. He talked about how he ordered congratulations on the guys of his third unit on the radio, which they listened to together on the outskirts of the Donetsk airport. About the spoil heap above Avdiivka, which looked like Bear Mountain to him, or rather like a dog. About an old man who emerged from the fog right in front of their positions and slowly pushed an old bicycle in front of him. Maksym wrote that it was St. Peter himself who went to work at the mine past them every time,” says writer Olena Herasymiuk.
Read also: In March 2023, Kyiv said goodbye to the Hero of Ukraine, Dmytro Da Vinci Kotsiubailo. At 18, he went to defend Ukraine from Russian aggression with arms in hand.
Writer Lyubko Deresh shared his memories of having had the good fortune to communicate with him and lead classes where he was a listener at the Voices of War veteran program. Maksym was a vivacious, witty, enormously talented person.
Who is Maksym Kryvtsov
The writer was born in Rivne. In 2014, he graduated from the Kyiv National University of Technology and Design and volunteered at war. Before that, he loved photography and wrote poetry. Later, he worked at the Center for Rehabilitation and Readaptation of Anti-Terrorist Operation and Joint Forces Operation Participants and Veteran Hub.
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he went back to the front line. He volunteered with the Pravyi Sektor (Right Sector) and later fought with the Da Vinci Wolves.
In October 2023, the Nash Format publishing house released a book of Kravtsov’s works, Poems from the Loophole. PEN Ukraine ranked this book among the best of 2023.
He chose the call sign “Dali” because he grew a mustache to twist it like the artist Salvador Dalí.
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