Renowned Ukrainian bandura player Ostap Kindrachuk passes away in occupied Crimea
Ukrainian bandura player Ostap Kindrachuk passed away in Russian-occupied Crimea at the age of 87 on Wednesday, 18 December.
Source: post on Ostap Kindrachuk’s Facebook page
Details: "Last night, Ostap Yuriiovych passed away. Eternal memory!" reads a post on his Facebook page.
Journalist Vasyl Chepurnyi revealed that although Kindrachuk was born in Halychyna, a region in the west of Ukraine, he stayed in Crimea to work as a sailor after receiving medical treatment on the peninsula. Since 1955, he began playing the bandura and performing in a local folk choir. He also researched the history of the Cossacks in Crimea and Kuban and appeared in documentaries.
Quote from Chepurnyi: "The Ukrainian troops left Crimea, but kobzar Ostap Kindrachuk stayed. He played on the Yalta embankment, dressed in vibrant Ukrainian attire, declaring: this is Ukraine."
More details: Roman Koval, President of the Historical Club Kholodny Yar, noted that Kindrachuk was still performing on the Yalta embankment in September and celebrated his 87th birthday in November.
"Back in September, he was playing on the embankment in Yalta, continuing to be an eyesore for the FSB. The occupiers repeatedly harassed and chased him away, but people stood for him," Koval added.
Ostap Kindrachuk was born in the village of Kotykivka, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast and spent his childhood in the Carpathians. Later, he moved to Kazakhstan, where he worked as a tractor driver. After nearly losing his arm to frostbite, he relocated to Yalta for treatment and decided to stay. He worked as a sailor at the local port and went on to study at the Batumi Maritime Academy at the navigator's department and eventually became a captain, spending 35 years at sea.
In 1955, Kindrachuk began playing the bandura, learning under Oleksii Nyrko, a historian of kobzar tradition and founder of the Bandura Museum in Yalta. Nyrko also led a bandura player ensemble at the local medical workers' club in Yalta.
By 1985, Kindrachuk had become a soloist in the Stepan Rudanskyi Crimean Folk Bandura Choir. After losing his job at the port in 1993, he started performing on the streets of Yalta.
He collected books on Ukrainian Cossack history, researched the kobzar tradition and left a lasting legacy of resilience and dedication to Ukrainian culture.
"I sang with a bandura on the Yalta embankment under both the Soviet and Ukrainian governments, I'm singing under the current government, and I will continue to sing with the sole thought that Ukraine 'isn't dead in Yalta,'" Kindrachuk wrote in a letter to Koval.
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