Goodbye, Gaba! Founder of the Black Sea Defense Group Killed in Action

Oct 23, 2026 14:47 Updated Oct 23, 2026 15:08

5 min read

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Authors

Philip Malzahn

Senior Correspondent

Gaba, my dearest friend,

I’m sorry for writing this letter so late. You know me; I’m bad at this stuff. When they told me you were killed, for the first few days, I just continued my life as if nothing had happened. Then I got terribly drunk for a while. Then we buried you, and now, I’m trying to understand.

I have to admit: It’s confusing. 

If you had asked me just one month ago, I would have told you that I am sure of three things in life:

Shit always flows downhill, 

I will never drink sangria again, and that you will survive this war.

Why? I don’t know. I thought it was the universe that decided that your veins were filled with grit and fire and steel. We all felt it: This man, he has something. Something unbreakable. Something invincible.

When the Russian tanks approached our position, I was standing in the corner, trying to film with my shaking hands. You ran out into the open. “Get the fuck back,” you shouted at us before you pummeled the armor that was dropping off the enemy soldiers.

It was the second time I had seen you in my life.

When they lodged themselves in the house next to us, you ran out and threw the last grenade. When that didn't stop them, you took an RPG and did the same.

The third time was enough. They died; we lived. 

From that moment, my life was not the same. I owed it to you. You never asked for anything in return. I tried to repay you anyway, whenever I could.

When Roma died, when you couldn’t sleep, your dreams haunting you, you called me.

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“Philip. I have a bad feeling about the next mission.”

We sat. We spoke until the skies turned from black to lavender to orange to blue.

You, as always, found your strength very fast, your doubts and weaknesses nothing but a fleeting moment visible in the depths of your eye.

You went back. 

Again, those accompanying you died. In front of your eyes.

You sent me a picture, still lying in the forest, a hole in your shoulder, fresh blood dripping onto the leaves.

“Philip, my friend, I’m injured. But only lightly. I’ll be home soon.”

Again, we sat and spoke until the skies turned from black to lavender to orange to blue.

You went back. Autumn was just beginning to turn the leaves red; it was a sunny Saturday, you wrote to me. “I'm going out. It's my last mission. Probably.” It was. On Sunday, you were killed.

Gaba, I know that, over the years, you were tested, broken, and challenged in ways too many to count. When your mother died, when your heart was crushed, every time, we sat. Until the morning. 

When the sun was up, we walked, walked, and walked, up and down and through the streets of the busy capital. We walked down the beach in Odesa; we marched through the forest. We drank and laughed and cried. We passed the same streets a million times, but we never noticed that we were going in circles. We got to know each other, every detail, every little secret, every fear and desire.

Your path was hard from the moment it began. How hard, I won’t repeat. Those who know—they know. You liked to forget it yourself. 

“I only have good memories”, you told me once.

At your funeral, after all the speeches about what a warrior you were, about how brave and strong, a woman came up. A grandmother. She passed on her handbag before looking at the crowd, at the faces of all our friends, all those who have gone through the fires of hell with you, and said, with the earnestness of someone whose decades of experience have freed them from having to use all the bullshit and niceties we are bound to in navigating our young lives:

“I knew him from the day he was born. He was such a quiet and soft boy. We thought he was a girl. No one would have thought that a soft boy could become such a soldier.”

Even as your lifeless body lay in front of me, all your medals (including the order for courage) shining in the late summer sun, I had to laugh. I had to laugh so much.

I learned one last thing about you, about a man I thought I knew fully: Your bravery, your invincibility, your courage—you were not born with it. You learned it. You earned it. Step by step. Every bullet, every injury, every drop of blood—yours, the enemies’, the blood of our friends. 

And that is why you are not really dead. You did survive this war. You will live on in our memories, in our community, and in our hearts. Because of what you did, because of who you became, because of the person you were. Because of who you are! 

I guess I'll see you soon. We will see you soon. Until then: don't miss us too much!

Philip.