Founder of "Ukraїner" Bohdan Lohvynenko voluntarily joined the AFU

Founder of "Ukraїner" Bohdan Lohvynenko voluntarily joined the AFU

Journalist and founder of the media project "Ukraїner" Bohdan Lohvynenko announced that he joined the army as a volunteer. According to him, he had legal grounds for deferment due to family circumstances, but he could no longer remain in civilian life.

He announced this on Facebook.

Lohvynenko stated that he had been preparing for military service for two years and had long asked the "Ukraїner" team to find a replacement for him.

"Two years ago, there was an idea at "Ukraїner" for part of the team to join the army’s media service. Fortunately, this did not happen for reasons beyond our control, and since then, in various forms, all those obliged to serve in the defence forces have joined, and I am the last," the journalist noted.

According to him, he already took the oath and started with basic general military training and will further serve as a driver of the detachment. He also urged "not to believe in the exhaustion of volunteer potential," although he believes that "it definitely needs to be approached differently."

Bohdan Lohvynenko during his basic military training

"I go to the army as an ordinary soldier [...] despite having legal grounds for deferment for family reasons. But not standing shoulder to shoulder with my people is emotionally more difficult than I can bear to not be in the defence forces today, where there is a catastrophic shortage of people," Lohvynenko shared.

The journalist hopes to motivate others to join the army with his example, those who still have "fear or deferments and reservations."

Bohdan Lohvynenko is a journalist, TV host, and public figure. He was born in 1988 in Kyiv.

In 2005, he founded a Ukrainian-language blog community about culture and the online magazine "Sumno?".

From 2007 to 2012, he worked as a manager for the rock band "Mertvyi Piven". Simultaneously, he created an author’s program about the internet and blogosphere on "First National". He was one of the organizers of the "Antonych-Fest" festival dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the poet Bohdan-Ihor Antonych.

He traveled hitchhiking in Western Europe, the Urals, Siberia, around the Black and Baltic Seas. He described his travels in a blog. Later, he lived in Southeast Asia.

In 2016, Lohvynenko launched the "Ukraїner" project, which conducts anthropological-ethnographic expeditions around Ukraine.