A poetry collection by Borys Humeniuk, a soldier listed as missing in action since December 2022, was presented at the Ternopil Regional Universal Scientific Library, Suspilne Ternopil reports.
Humeniuk volunteered for the ATO in 2014, served for approximately two years, and re-enlisted when Russia launched its full-scale invasion. He served in the Separate Presidential Brigade as an infantryman before disappearing.
The book, titled Fourth Wave: Poems from War, was compiled and published by his friend, Ukrainian writer and editor Ivan Andrusiak. Humeniuk's daughter Oksana told Suspilne on February 26 that her father had entrusted all his manuscripts to Andrusiak:
"My father left him all his manuscripts, because I don't know much about publishing, and Mr. Ivan both writes himself and helps other authors publish books. So he decided to put together such a collection and publish it for my father's birthday — dad turned 60 on January 30. We hope that when he is found and everything is well with him, it will be a gift for him."
Andrusiak described how the poems came into being. He met Humeniuk at a literary event, and when the war in Donbas started, the verses followed:
"It all began when Borys went to the front as a volunteer in 2014. That's when poems started coming to him. He would send them to me directly from his positions, and that's how a thin collection of poems came together — there were 20 or 30 of them. That book sold out fast. Then more poems from war were written and published. Somewhere around 2021 we talked about the need for a new book and Borys started writing it. Before the start of the full-scale war, the manuscript was already finished and the file was with me."
Bohdan Budnyi, director of the publishing house, shared his impression of the work:
"You can see that this is written by a person who spent a very long time at war and who knows it from the inside. They call the book 'combat poetry.' There are both poems and prose here. You can see that it's not artificial, that it's from the heart."
Humeniuk was born in 1965 in the village of Ostriv in the Ternopil region. He was a participant in the Revolution of Dignity, deputy commander of the "OUN" battalion, a member of the People's Movement, and the Ukrainian Helsinki Union. In addition to literature, he also practiced painting.
