UAF servicemember and journalist Ruslan Rudukan from Uman (Cherkasy oblast) was killed in action near Zarichne, Zaporizhzhia oblast, on August 30, IMI reports.

Ruslan Rudukan was conscripted in fall 2024. His sister said he had tried to enlist earlier, but was turned down several times because of his health.

“Two or three times a week, he’d systematically pack his bag and head off to another enlistment office with the boys. And in the evening he’d come back. ‘Rejected again. I’m done, WIA. Nobody wants me,’ he’d say, pointing at his legs. He had serious health problems. Surgery wasn’t an option. But he absolutely refused to just sit at home,” Inna wrote.

In the army, Ruslan served as a UAV operator. On August 30, he set out on what would be his final combat mission.

Before enlisting, Ruslan Rudukan had worked for a long time as a journalist at the oblast newspaper Pres-Tsentr, and did layout work for other print publications, his colleague, Cherkasy-based journalist Yulia Fomichova, told the Institute of Mass Information’s regional representative in Cherkasy oblast, Yelena Shchepak.

According to the Institute of Mass Information, Ruslan Rudukan is the 137th media professional to die in the course of Russia’s aggressive war in Ukraine.