1
Stepanʼs mother Stalina was born and raised in Magadan, then moved with her parents to Rostov-on-Don, received a pedagogical education and did not plan to live in Ukraine. A friend invited her to Kramatorsk and introduced her to her compadre Viktor Chubenko. This was in 1992. A few years later, the couple got married. In Kramatorsk, they had two sons: the eldest Andriy and the youngest Stepan (born in 1997).
Victor worked in a locomotive depot, and Stalin, after the decrees that followed one after another, got a job as a teacher of Russian language and literature at a school. She left her Russian citizenship, but tried to teach Ukrainian.
She bought a childrenʼs book with poems, learned a few and threw it away, "because the stateʼs policy was such". And there was no need to know Ukrainian at that time in Kramatorsk, everyone spoke Russian, and there was a demand for its teachers in schools.
Viktor and Stalinaʼs life revolved around their sons. The Chubenkas lived modestly, in an apartment on the outskirts of the city. The sons shared one room for two, and from an early age they played sports. Stepan was ardent and had a strong character from childhood.
At the same time, he was not shy about showing his feelings — he often hugged his parents, and in high school he took his motherʼs hand, and so they went to school.
In May 2019, almost five years after Stepanʼs murder, Stalina posted several photos with her son on Facebook and wrote, "I AM A MOM!" This is one of those photos.
З особистого архіву Сталіни Чубенко
In Russian-speaking Kramatorsk, Stepan (like all other children) grew up watching Russian TV series, loved Yeseninʼs poems, quoted "The Master and Margarita," and gave flowers to veterans on May 9. He dedicated one of his works to his great-grandfather, who died in World War II. No one knew where his grave was, and to pay his respects, Stepan would go to the eternal flame.
The guy was a humanitarian, wrote works and poems and had a talent for football. He played in the childrenʼs football team "Avangard". At a young age, he began to travel with friends around the country to football matches, cheered for Donetsk "Shakhtar". Thanks to football, he became friends with the "ultras". So books about UPA appeared at home, and Stepan started to collect poems in Ukrainian. He was 15 years old.
“He brought home Shklyar’s book ʼThe Black Crowʼ. I asked whose it was. And Stepan said, ʼIt’s mineʼ,” Stalina recalls.
When the Revolution of Dignity began, Stepan had just turned 16. Together with his friends, he went to Kyiv to the Maidan, stayed there for two weeks and returned home, but not for long.
In February 2014, a friend from Kyiv called him. Styopa ran away from classes, took his belongings and money from home, bought cigarettes and arrived at the Maidan in the midst of the shootings of protesters.
"It was impossible to keep him at home. It was difficult with him, but never boring," says Stalina.
Russian military and Ukrainian separatists led by Igor Girkin-Strelkov occupied Kramatorsk on April 12, 2014. During the occupation, Stepan wore a sweatshirt with the inscription "Glory to Ukraine", once tore down the "DPR" flag in the city, and together with his friends he carried bread and water to Ukrainian military personnel who held positions at the airport near the city during the occupation of Kramatorsk.
Stalina keeps many of his sonʼs belongings, including books.
Heorhiy Ivanchenko / «Babel»
“We only breathed a sigh of relief when our son returned home,” recalls Stalina.
In occupied Kramatorsk, it was dangerous to stay like Stepan — people were disappearing without a trace all around. To protect their son, his parents took him to Rostov for Easter, from where he escaped home a month later.
And later he refused to go on vacation to occupied Crimea, as his parents insisted. Instead, he went to his friend in Kyiv. He said he would look for a job and a university for the summer — he was graduating from high school the following year.
On July 5, Girkin suddenly left Slovyansk and Kramatorsk with columns of pro-Russian militants, the occupation ended. Viktor and Stalina began to call their son home. He agreed, and after July 22, 2014, he disappeared.
2
On the morning of July 24, Stalin received a call from an unknown person. He said that he was from Donetsk, the call sign was “Slavyan”, and that her son had been detained by “counterintelligence of the MGB of the DPR”. The parents rushed to the occupied city in a hurry.
They broke through the barricades to the captured SBU building and began to look for their son’s name in the notebook with the names of the detainees. He was not there.
Then they wrote a missing person report to the “head of the DPR military police”, it was then headed by a separatist with the call sign “Nos”. They learned that “your right-wing” and “Nazi” [son] were taken to dig trenches in Gorbachevo-Mykhailivka near Kerch”.
The parents went to the village, went around all the yards and trenches with a photo of their son. One of the locals secretly said that the wounded young man had been taken to Donetsk to a hospital and wanted to send him to Rostov as a prisoner. Viktor and Stalina began combing the hospitals, also to no avail.
In the end, Stalina caught the “Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the DPR” Oleksandr Zakharchenko himself — she was waiting for his motorcade.
“The commotion started, and I quickly told him: my son, 16 years old, disappeared, they sent him to Kerch,” recalls Stalina.
Why Zakharchenko didnʼt brush it off is unknown, perhaps Stalinaʼs Russian passport helped. Zakharchenko knew about Kerch and "Kerch" itself — it was one of the battalions of militants that kidnapped, tortured and killed people. The next day Zakharchenko called his parents and said that Stepan had been shot. An investigation is underway. They are looking for the killers and the body.
Militants Oleksandr Zakharchenko (left) and Vadym Pogodin (next to him in camouflage) defend Rinat Akhmetovʼs house, which was seized by Donetsk residents, May 2014.
The search lasted two months. Members of the battalion stationed in Gorbachevo-Mykhailivka were detained. The killers buried Stepanʼs body in a trench near a river in the occupied village. The teenagerʼs body was taken to the morgue and offered to be buried quickly.
Stalina insisted that everything be formalized properly. When the separatists refused to let the parents with their sonʼs body go to Kramatorsk, she called Zakharchenkoʼs reception and said that she would jump out of the window if they were not released immediately. Within 10 minutes, they were given permission to leave.
"They really wanted me to bury him there. And I said no. They saw a woman not in tears and snot, who could be intimidated. But a woman from whom something dear had been taken away," says Stalina.
On Stepanʼs grave there is a date of death — July 27, in the trial held in Ukraine, the date of death is July 28. And Stalina says that perhaps he was killed on the 29th — "no one knows for sure".
Photo from Stepanʼs burial in Kramatorsk, November 8, 2014.
Артем Гетьман
3
Chubenkoʼs murder was investigated in parallel in Kramatorsk and occupied Donetsk. Stepanʼs parents compiled all available facts and reconstructed what happened to their son.
He didn’t go to Kyiv for work or to look for an institute. Stepan wanted to mobilize with the volunteers who were being sent to fight in the East. He was refused because of his age. His parents were told about this in the “Lion’s Hundred”, to which Stepan had joined.
At the end of July, he sent a message to his mother that everything was fine with him. And he kept quiet about going home and getting on the train to Donetsk.
Why he went to the occupied city is still unknown, says Stalina. She thinks it was because there were only tickets for that route. In June 2014, trains were launched between Kyiv and Donetsk, and a direct connection to Kramatorsk was only promised. The trains to Kharkiv were crowded.
In the occupied territories, Stalina learned that Stepan had not reached Donetsk by 20 kilometers. Around July 23, at the “Mospyne” station, unknown men with weapons took him off the train. They grabbed him by the blue-and-yellow ribbons.
“In Donetsk we heard ʼright-wingerʼ, ʼNaziʼ and we know that he was killed for his pro-Ukrainian position. We know that he had blue-and-yellow ribbons and a scarf of the football club “Karpaty”, but whether they were on him, on his backpack or in his backpack, and what happened there in general — is unknown,” says Stalina.
The teenager was held in Donetsk for some time, then taken to a nearby village Gorbachevo-Mykhailivka, where the “Kerch” battalion was based, and shot. Before being killed, he was tortured, with his front teeth knocked out.
In 2014 and 2015, in occupied Donetsk, Stalina spoke with several witnesses to the murder. They said that Stepan was strangled with a towel and beaten so badly that someone was already saying, “Let’s hurry up so he doesn’t suffer.” They also promised to spare his life if he sided with the “DPR”, but he refused.
One day in the unoccupied Donetsk region, a man who had escaped the occupation was detained. He said that he saw Chubenko killed by Zhora, Buba, and Kerch.
The witness only knew the nicknames, and Ukrainian investigators used social media to determine who they belonged to — the leader of “Kerch” Vadim Pogodin (“Kerch”) and two of his henchmen from the battalion — Yuriy Moskalyov (“Zhora”) and Maksym Sukhomlinov (“Buba”).
Militants Pogodin (far right) and Moskalyov (standing second from left). The photo was taken on August 7, 2014, less than two weeks after Stepanʼs murder. Maksym Sukhomlinov, February 15, 2015.
During an investigative experiment in the unoccupied Donetsk region, a witness said that Stepan was taken to a dug grave near the river, his sneakers were removed, his hands and feet were tied with tape, he was placed on his knees, a T-shirt was put over his head, and all three of them took turns shooting him in the head. The body was wrapped in a tarpaulin and buried.
According to the results of the forensic examination, Stepan died from three shots to the head. Pogodin gave the order to shoot, and he fired the last shot, possibly at the already dead boy. Sukhomlinov fired the first shot.
In Ukraine, Stepanʼs murder was investigated as intentional (Article 115 of the Criminal Code). Cases under the article "war crimes" (Article 438 of the Criminal Code) were not opened at that time due to lack of experience, and law enforcement officers said among themselves: "We are not at war, but the ATO."
The Ukrainian trial in the Donetsk region lasted three years. The dock was empty — the murderers were tried in absentia. Sessions were constantly canceled — sometimes the judges were busy, sometimes the prosecutors and lawyers did not come. For the parents, the delays were torture.
All three murderers were sentenced in the fall of 2017 — life imprisonment. At that time, sentences for separatists were rare. Stalina felt that at least some justice had been served in her son’s case.
"I donʼt want them to die, but I want them to live in a way that makes them want to die. That they work in the colony and give all their money to the ʼAntoshkaʼ orphanage, which my son helped," says Stalina.
Stalina on the day of the verdict against Stepanʼs murderers, November 2017, Toretsk.
4
The names of Stepan Chubenkoʼs killers, who were identified in Kramatorsk, coincided with those Stalin was called in occupied Donetsk. In 2015, she received a document from local illegal law enforcement officers.
It said that her son was killed by Pogodin, Sukhomlinov, and Moskalyov because they considered him a member of the "Right Sector" and suspected that he might be involved in the deaths of people in Odesa on May 2 at the House of Trade Unions. The document indicated that they could not convict the perpetrators in Donetsk — they had probably fled to Crimea.
But soon Stalina received a call from Donetsk — there they captured and sent Moskalyov to the pre-trial detention center. The woman rushed to the occupied city, asked for a face-to-face meeting and unexpectedly received consent.
And although their meeting was later canceled, she managed to see the face of her sonʼs killer when she was in the pre-trial detention center, and he was being escorted past. All she could do was give him a package with food in the pre-trial detention center.
She recalled that her son had been starved a week after his arrest by Moskalyov and his henchmen.
In 2016, an illegal “DPR” court convicted Moskalyov not for the murder of a teenager, but for complicity. He convinced the judge that he had not shot. He was given 16 months in a penal colony and released right in the courtroom — he served the entire term in the Donetsk pre-trial detention center while awaiting the court’s decision. After his release, Moskalyov, his wife, and five children moved to live with relatives in Russia and settled in Cheboksary.
Meanwhile, Ukraine tried to find Stepanʼs killers. They were put on the international wanted list by Interpol, and it almost worked — Pogodin was detained in Crimea in the summer of 2017.
"Exactly the one I wanted to question. Ask why they didnʼt give Stepan back. Those creatures knew I was looking for him," says Stalina.
Pogodin was detained when he came to apply for a job with the occupation security forces with a Ukrainian passport. The check ended with him being wanted for murder. A court in Crimea arrested him for 40 days, but Pogodin was not extradited to Ukraine.
The then Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said that he “had no moral right” to contact the occupation authorities of Crimea. In the last days, when Pogodin’s term of imprisonment was expiring, Stalina made a fuss in the media and Ukraine submitted documents for extradition to the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation.
Meanwhile, influential people in Russia — from Strelkov to deputies of the Russian State Duma — stood up for the militant. They demanded an end to the repressions of the heroes of the “Russian Spring”.
Pogodin was not extradited. After his release from the pre-trial detention center, he stayed to live in Crimea, became a developer. He went on TV. He denied the accusations of murdering a teenager.
In 2019-2020, Vadym Pogodin often appeared on Crimean television as a developer.
In 2023, the case took another unexpected turn. Pogodin and Sukhomlinov were detained, imprisoned in the Donetsk pre-trial detention center, and put on trial for the murder of Chubenko. One can only guess why this happened. One version is that Pogodin’s “Kerch” had previously been directly subordinate to Girkin, who was accused of extremism in the summer of 2022 and placed in a Moscow pre-trial detention center.
At the end of May 2023, the so-called “DPR” court released Pogodin under house arrest, while Sukhomlinov remained in pre-trial detention. Since then, Pogodin has been talking about their trial on “VKontakte”. Here is his version.
In 2023, he voluntarily came to Donetsk to deal with the Chubenko case, and the arrest came as a surprise to him. In all his posts, he insists that he did not kill the teenager, but calls him a “Nazi”, “right-winger”, and “spy.” He says that under wartime laws he had the right to kill him.
Pogodin calls the "Young Republic" "DyRa" and writes that the FSB employees were recruited by SBU. In the Donetsk pre-trial detention center, half of the prisoners are heroes of the "Russian Spring", who have been awaiting sentence for nine years. In his posts, he supports Strelkov and criticizes his imprisonment.
In March 2024, the “Supreme Court of the DPR” began trying Sukhomlinov and Pogodin. Their lawyers were former Ukrainian judges. The trial was attended by the “DPR” prosecutor and a representative of Stalin, provided by the “DPR”.
In October 2024, Pogodin reported that he and Sukhomlinov were going to be found guilty and sent to prison for 15 years. But that never happened. In November 2024, the judge stopped the proceedings because the prosecutor had incorrectly filed the charges. Pogodin appealed this decision, demanding an acquittal.
In the spring of 2025, a new trial began against Pogodin and Sukhomlinov, which again ended in nothing in July 2025 — the website of the so-called “Supreme Court of the DPR” states that the case against Pogodin and Sukhomlinov was closed because “the verdict has entered into legal force”. It is unclear what this means. Pogodin appealed this decision as well.
According to him, Sukhomlinov was released from pre-trial detention in February 2025. Pogodin himself mobilized into the Russian army in 2024. During the winter holidays, he showed himself in military uniform.
In the comments, he was written that he was getting closer to the governorʼs seat in Lviv. He replied that before Lviv he would have an intermediate station in Odesa.
At the end of July, Pogodin was wounded somewhere near Bakhmut, he was operated on there, in Luhansk and in Russia. In August, he returned to the war.
Vadym Pogodin went to war against Ukraine again in 2024, and in July 2025 he was wounded.
5
Stalina and Viktor Chubenko did not follow the trial of their sonʼs murderers in occupied Donetsk. They learned about the detention from Girkin-Strelkovʼs Telegram channel.
Stalina says that they try not to think about these “creatures”. The family is friends with the families of the fallen soldiers. Memories and support give them the strength to live. But it wasn’t always like this.
The hardest years for the Chubenkos were the first two years after their sonʼs death. Viktorʼs eyes started to burn from tears. He blamed himself for letting the little one go to Kyiv. Stalina saved herself by working at school, was torn between the investigation in Kramatorsk and occupied Donetsk, and after the trial in Ukraine she took up volunteering and preserving the memory of her son.
"I lost my mother very early, at the age of 26, and I was going through it hard. And when I lost Stepan, I decided that I had to live for the two of us, so that Stepan could see me from heaven and say, ʼWhat a mother I haveʼ," says Stalina.
While Stalina and Viktor are alive, their son continues his “life after life” on Earth. They cannot touch him, but they say they feel him near. They talk to him, and he helps.
Stepanʼs parents travel around the country a lot — they present a collection that they have compiled from their sonʼs poems and works. It is called "I understood the meaning of life".
They distribute it for donations — "This is how Stepan earns money". Most of the poems in the collection are in Russian. The parents planned to translate them into Ukrainian. They themselves have also switched to Ukrainian in everyday life.
Stalina at the presentation of Stepanʼs collected works, August 2023.
З особистого архіву Сталіни Чубенко
At first glance, the Chubenkos family seems open — they are always ready to talk about their son. In fact, they keep quiet about many things. For example, they never talk about their eldest son Andriy — where he is now and what he does, about relatives in Russia and his Russian passport.
When asked about her name — Stalina — she says that it is not in honour of the dictator, but from the word "steel". The Chubenkos also closed themselves off from people because of hate on social networks.
In the first years after Stepanʼs death, they received many letters saying that their son "wandered around the country", "he should have dug trenches — he would have survived", "he should have let go and lived".
"And how do I let [him] go? Sometimes I worry that Iʼm forgetting Stepan, because I cry less," Stalina admits.
For many years she suffered from not being able to save her son. Eventually she began to ask herself not why it happened, but for what.
"Nobody could do anything about the bandits from Kerch. They killed civilians during the occupation and robbed. Stepan destroyed them with his death. They have been gone since September 2014," says Stalina.
6
After the full-scale invasion, Viktor and Stalina moved to live in Poltava. They were afraid not so much of shelling as of occupation. In 2022, someone attacked Stepanʼs grave and smashed the monument.
The parents believe that this was a warning from those who are waiting for the Russians in Kramatorsk. The parents disguised the grave so that strangers would not find it. They do not plan to rebury their son.
Stepanʼs grave in Kramatorsk before the attack by vandals.
З особистого архіву Сталіни Чубенко
“Stepan wanted Kramatorsk to be Ukraine, let him protect his city,” says Stalina.
In evacuation, she teaches online classes at a Kramatorsk school. She teaches the basics of health and foreign literature. She is glad that there are no Russian works in the course. Viktor has been retired for several years.
One of the Chubenkoʼs dreams is for their son to be awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine. The petition gathered the necessary 25,000 votes, but the Hero was not awarded on either Flag Day or Independence Day.
"Isnʼt Stepan a hero to the authorities? He gave his life for Ukraine," says Stalina.
Now the Chubenkos are very interested in politics. Stalina is subscribed to the Office of the President, Iryna Herashchenko and Petro Poroshenko on social networks. She and Viktor are ardent supporters of the latter. Stalina says that for her he is a leader, and Viktor adds, “who has a high rating among Western politicians”. The “Minsk Agreements” for them are a good move that allowed to delay a full-scale war.
“In 2014, Stepan said that, except for Porokh, no one would pull the country out. And I still believe so,” says Viktor.
Viktor Chubenko.
Heorhiy Ivanchenko / «Babel»
The parents are no longer offended by the fact that Poroshenkoʼs Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko did nothing to have Pogodin extradited. They say they wouldnʼt have given him away anyway.
But they donʼt like the current presidentʼs supporters and almost out of the blue, without any questions, Viktor calls the Babel correspondent a "zelebobik", he says, itʼs obvious at first glance.
They rent a small apartment in Poltava. They evacuated there with two dogs — Bilka, who was sheltered after 2022, and Bim, Stepanʼs dog. Bim recently died. They brought few things to Poltava — one small bag for each of them and two large boxes with Stepanʼs things.
When the air raid alarm sounds, Stalin takes out cardboard boxes from the safest corner of the apartment.
“What I hide behind two walls are Stepan’s things,” she says and takes out her son’s cup with “Shakhtar” symbols and the leotard he wore when he was engaged in Greco-Roman wrestling.
He puts on a hoodie with the inscription "Glory to Ukraine" and a T-shirt that his son wore when he played in the KVN. The same one was on his head when he was shot.
In November of this year, Stepan would have turned 28 years old.
Her sonʼs belongings that Stalina transported to Poltava.
Heorhiy Ivanchenko / «Babel»