Uncle Hrysha — Ukraine’s Most Defiant Volunteer from Kherson

July 3, 2025April 3, 2026

Today, Uncle Hrysha — Hryhorii Mykolayovych Yanchenko — turns 78. Honored Citizen of Kherson, Knight of the Order “People’s Hero of Ukraine“, renowned Ukrainian volunteer… All true, but to hell with the official titles. For us, Hryhorii Yanchenko was and remains simply Uncle Hrysha — close, familiar, and irreplaceable. Never mind that he’s of very respectable age and gets around in a wheelchair, he has enough energy for ten healthy young men.

In 1966, he was drafted into the Soviet Army and served in the Pskov Airborne Division. During his service he sustained multiple shrapnel wounds, and in the early nineties those wounds led to gangrene in his limbs. After numerous surgeries, Hryhorii Yanchenko became a disabled person and retired.

Uncle Hrysha has no legs and no fingers — he uses a wheelchair. Still, he jumped into volunteering in 2014 and within a year, he raised over 300,000 hryvnias for Ukrainian paratroopers and won the national “Philanthropist of the Year” award in the individual category.

Ukrainian Songs Under Occupation

What made Uncle Hrysha known around the world were videos filmed in Russian-occupied Kherson. The occupation didn’t change his way of life. He kept showing up in crowded public spaces in his electric wheelchair, playing Ukrainian songs through a Bluetooth speaker and raising money for the Armed Forces. Those videos went viral across TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. Here’s how he remembers the occupation himself:

When the Russian occupiers entered Kherson, at first I was in a stupor. Then I drove out to the city center. With my speaker. I loaded it with songs — not just the national anthem and Chervona Kalyna, but military songs and popular Ukrainian tracks too.

If you’d just looked at the graffiti on a wall that said ‘Glory to Ukraine’… just looked at it… or if they found something like that on your phone… It doesn’t matter what you tell the occupiers — they beat out of you whatever they need.

But for the people of Kherson, Ukrainian music was like a breath of fresh air. I’d just drive out — and people were already waiting for me. Waiting with joy, with smiles — there are no words for it. You ride through, and people are singing along.

Evacuated Before Arrest

The occupying authorities and their Russian collaborator didn’t just hint — they kept threatening Uncle Hrysha outright. When local partisans learned the arrest was scheduled for September 2022, they didn’t wait. They moved him smuggled and fast — first by boat to Oleshky, then through Vasylivka, and finally to Zaporizhzhia

Four days after Kherson’s liberation, he was home. As he put it at the time: “It seems to me that Kherson without me is not Kherson”. Since early 2024, Uncle Hrysha has been traveling to major Ukrainian cities, expanding what he calls the “geography of his volunteering.” Today he raises money for drones and Starlink terminals for the 25th Brigade of the Air Assault Forces and the 59th Assault Brigade of the USF — Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces.

Kherson Under Fire — What Uncle Hrysha Sees

In 2025, Uncle Hrysha speaks with grief about what the invaders are doing to Kherson — the same thing they did to Bakhmut, Vuhledar, and Mariinka:

Almost all the infrastructure is being destroyed. KABs¹ recently hit the regional council building. Before that, four KABs hit a sports complex where a team was training. They used to reach only the outskirts — now the Orcs² are just one kilometer away. Across the Dnipro — already Orcs. They’re firing point-blank, with direct line of sight, no reconnaissance drones needed. They can see Kherson, and when people walk the streets, drones hunt them — ordinary civilians, just pedestrians. On top of that, on the left bank, the Orcs have set up drone pilot training courses. I was told they run the final exam like this: they hand you a drone, and if you destroy a person — you get your diploma.

Hryhorii Yanchenko sources and orders everything for the military himself — drones, communications equipment, construction supplies — and every month he personally delivers it to the front line. When he feels tired, he says he compares himself to the soldiers fighting 24/7. That’s enough to keep going.

Uncle Hrysha is the unofficial symbol of Ukrainian volunteering, known both inside Ukraine and far beyond its borders. And today, on his 78th birthday, he’s still at it.

¹KAB (Kerovana Aviatsiyna Bomba) – Guided Aerial Bomb. A cheap but powerful munition the ruSSians use to strike civilian cities.

²Orcs – a common term for Russians who support or participate in the armed aggression against Ukraine. Dehumanizing? Yes. Accurate? Also yes.