Oleg “Ryba” Rybalchenko is a fan of Dynamo football club (Kyiv), representative of the movement “White Boys Club”.
Oleg Igorovich Rybalchenko was born on May 19, 1994 in the city of Cherkasy. He studied at school No. 28, and in 2011 he entered the history faculty of the Kyiv National University named after him. Taras Shevchenko. He studied at the Department of New and Modern History of Foreign Countries.
He was fond of football since childhood. He dreamed of becoming a professional player, even despite the diagnosis of bronchial asthma, which doctors put to the young man at an early age. To convince his parents to play football, at the age of 7 he secretly went to consult doctors and demanded a certificate that would allow him to attend the football section.
Oleg was brought to his first stand of fans by his father. So they attended matches together in their native Cherkassy and chose to travel to Kyiv to support the national team. Currently, Oleg Rybalchenko's father, Igor Valerievich, also serves in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, voluntarily joining the defense of the country on February 24, 2022.
Oleg came to the fan stand of the capital Dynamo as a student, namely since 2011. He studied the cultures of fan movements around the world and helped develop a high level of fan support at Dynamo. The most important holidays for Oleg in those years were trips to different cities of Ukraine for football matches of his native club. He was interested in the history of the club, and was also an active participant in all football events. He collected the club's iconic memorabilia, which had an important symbolic meaning for him.
Studying at the Faculty of History, Oleg studied the history of the countries of Western Europe. Therefore, when the criminal authorities, at the behest of the Kremlin, decided to deprive Ukraine of a European future, like the vast majority of his comrades, he defended the choice of the Ukrainian people during the events of the Revolution of Dignity. With the beginning of the Russian invasion in the east of the country, he took up arms, fought in the volunteer platoon “Syndicate” (as part of the volunteer battalions “Aidar” and “OUN”). In Donbas he took part in battles in the village of Pisky and the city of Schastya.
After returning to civilian life, he graduated from the university, having excellently defended in 2017 his master's thesis “Military Dictatorship in Greece 1967-1974”. He realized his talent in the journalistic field. He worked as an investigative journalist and published in a number of well-known publications, exposing high-profile corruption schemes and abuses by officials in his articles. Relatives recall that in this way Oleg was again at war, only another one. From confrontations on Maidan and fierce fighting in Donetsk region and Luhansk region, his war with corruption began.
In 2021, he married his beloved Anastasia, with whom he had been together since his student years. Friends recall that over the years Oleg has changed. From that period he traveled the world a lot and had a large number of plans for the future, a separate part of which he sought to bring to life by his 30th birthday. But most of all the cities in the world, he loved Kiev and said that he wanted to build a family and achieve his goals only in this city.
From the first day of the full-scale invasion, “Ryba” again took up arms in the ranks of “UVO” volunteers. He was a scout, commanded a detachment. He took part in the battles for Kiev, and later in the Bakhmut direction. Brethren recall how he without hesitation, calmly and methodically performed the most dangerous tasks. Oleg Rybalchenko died on December 21, 2022 in battle for Bakhmut near the village of Klishchivka from being hit by an enemy shell. We said goodbye to the 28-year-old Warrior in the Mikhailovsky Golden-Domed Cathedral.
