1980–2022
Yurii Ruf
Poet, founder of Dukh Natsii
Yurii Dadak, an associate professor at a forestry university, studied wood dust; as the poet Yurii Ruf he wrote verse about strong Ukrainians and founded the Dukh Natsii project. On 24 February 2022 he volunteered for the front, and he was killed in Luhansk Oblast on 1 April 2022.
Key accomplishments
- Poetry collections Crimson Lyrics (2012), Time of Revolution (2014), At the Turn of Epochs (2015, dedicated to the soldiers of the Russo-Ukrainian war) and Vanilla or Steel?! (2021)
- Founded the NGO “Literary and Educational Project Dukh Natsii” (2015)
- For many years the regular host of the Kholodnyi Yar festival
- Candidate of Technical Sciences (2008) and associate professor in the sawmilling technology department of the Ukrainian National Forestry University
- Order for Courage, 3rd class (posthumously, decree No. 334/2022 of 14 May 2022)
Who was Yurii Ruf?
Yurii Ruf is the name the Lviv scientist Yurii Dadak took in 2011, while preparing his first poetry collection, Crimson Lyrics (Bahriana liryka), for print. He had been writing poems since he was 14, but he worked as an engineer: he graduated from the Ukrainian National Forestry University, defended a dissertation in 2008 on capturing dust in wood processing, and became an associate professor.
He was born in 1980 in Berezhany, Ternopil Oblast, into a scientist’s family, and grew up in Lviv.
Poems against despair
Ruf disliked the way Ukrainian poetry so often showed Ukrainians as poor and grief-stricken. So he wrote patriotic, militant verse. After Crimson Lyrics came the collections Time of Revolution (2014) and At the Turn of Epochs (2015), about the soldiers of the Russo-Ukrainian war, the children’s book The Storyteller (Kazkovyk, 2018) and Vanilla or Steel?! (2021). In 2015 he founded the literary and educational project Dukh Natsii (“Spirit of the Nation”), and for many years he hosted the Kholodnyi Yar festival.
A volunteer of the 24th Brigade
On 24 February 2022 Ruf joined the 24th Separate Mechanized Brigade straight away, and on 3 March he fought his first battle. His brigade was stationed in Popasna in Luhansk Oblast. Yurii Ruf (Dadak) was killed by enemy mortar fire in Luhansk Oblast on 1 April 2022. He was 41.
How he is remembered
Ruf was buried at Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv and posthumously awarded the Order for Courage, 3rd class. Streets in Lviv and Khmelnytskyi bear his name, and the National Forestry University, where he taught, has an exhibition dedicated to him.
