Not a lot of people know that, when “Azov” was still a battalion, the first fighter who died was a Russian guy from Khabarovsk named Andrey “Balagan”.
Andrey was a fan of CSKA Moscow, and took part in the protest on Manezhnaya Square in 2010, after which he was persecuted by the security forces and was forced to leave Russia and move to Ukraine, in Nikolaev city.
When the revolution started in 2014, he was proactively participating in protests in Kiev as well as in Nikolaev. And when a war started in the east of Ukraine, Andrey volunteered to go to the front, and as a part of “Azov” he was freeing Mariupol. Balagan died on the 4th of August in 2014 during the fight near Donetsk: he exploded on a radio-controlled fougasse while storming Marinka.
Andrey was posthumously rewarded with a title of a “People’s Hero of Ukraine”, and Kholodnyi Yar’s badge of honor. In Nikolaev, there is also a street named after him.
Russian Volunteer Corps honors the memory of Andrey, the same way
as his comrades do.