Serhii Antonenko, a captain of justice and prosecutor, was killed in action while carrying out a combat mission in the Kharkiv region. His memory is being honoured at the Office of the Prosecutor General.
Before the war, Serhii Antonenko worked as a prosecutor in the prosecutor’s offices of Kherson region, as well as in the military prosecutor’s offices of the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, Kherson and Zhytomyr garrisons. For his length of service, he was awarded the rank of captain of justice. He qualified as a lawyer, but did not have time to begin practising.
With the outbreak of war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Serhii spent three years taking part in combat operations in the ATO zone, where his call sign was ‘Prosecutor’. After being wounded in the line of duty, he returned to prosecutorial work.
After the start of the full-scale invasion, Serhii Antonenko joined the 40th Separate Rifle Battalion “Kodak”, where he commanded a unit and, together with his comrades-in-arms, carried out combat missions on the front line.
The defender’s sister, Anna, recalls that from the first days of the invasion her brother was determined to go to the front and always repeated: ‘If not us, then who?’ When she asked him, ‘How are you?’ he would invariably reply, ‘Everything is fine’, although, as she says, on the front line it was ‘hell, where our people are dying, the very best are dying’.
On 19 July 2022, Captain Serhii Antonenko was killed in action while carrying out a combat mission near the village of Nortsiivka in the Izium district of Kharkiv region. On 26 July 2022, he was buried in the ATO Heroes cemetery in his home town of Kamianske.
For his courage and self-sacrifice, Serhii Antonenko was posthumously awarded the Order “For Courage” III class. He is survived by his parents, his sister Anna and his niece, who cherish his memory as a man of honour, bravery and unshakeable faith in victory.
The Office of the Prosecutor General stresses that the actions of Serhii Antonenko are the price of Ukraine’s freedom and independence.