RFE/RL journalist and producer Vira Hyrych, 54, died in a Russian air strike on the residential building where she lived in Kyiv on April 28, 2022.

Hyrych was key to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)’s frontline reporting on the war against Ukraine, coordinating assignments for field correspondents during the conflict. The last video Hyrych produced told the story of an 87-year-old holocaust survivor and her 94-year-old Russian husband, who were evacuated from Mariupol to Kyiv.

RFE/RL friends and colleagues remember Hyyrch as kind, generous, intelligent, tactful, modest, sensitive, and bright with a big heart.” Even as war threatened her own country, Hyrych was instrumental in securing safe harbor for RFE/L’s Afghan and Belarusian colleagues in Kyiv in the face of repression by the Taliban and Lukashenka regimes. Hyrych joined RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service in 2018 after working for over 20 years at leading Ukrainian television channels.

She is survived by her adult son and parents.