82 The Economist March 19th 2022
Obituary Pasha Lee
OntheverydaythatRussiainvaded,February24th,PashaLee
left his job and went to enlist with the Territorial Defence Forc
es of Ukraine. He might well have been recognised as he signed up
and took the oath to defend the motherland, because his face was
famous. It was bright and handsome, with a quiff of wellgelled
black hair and a delicate line of beard, and with an oriental cast
from his halfKorean father.
His looks had turned him into a boy idol of a sort, and his Insta
gram page showed him living the dream: buffing his smooth, hard
pecs at the gym, sipping coffee in bed in a luxury hotel, posing in
sexy shades against backgrounds of soaring skyscrapers or foam
ing water, adjusting the cuffs of beautiful jackets. Even in more
everyday gear, like his smileyface sweatshirt, he was clearly in
love with his phone and himself.
The job he had walked away from was as a presenter on the
Dom (“Home”) tvchannel—specifically, presenter of a popular
new show called “Day at Home”, and glitzier bits of programming
such as “Star Factory” and “XFactor”. But through the neon and
glitter there was also politics here. Dom had been set up in 2020 to
broadcast in both Russian and Ukrainian to Russianoccupied Do
netsk and Luhansk in the east, as well as to Crimea. “Do you want
to know the truth?” shouted billboards and phones all over the
country when they had their big audience drive; “Watch Dom tv.“
President Zelensky himself had said he wanted two or three more
channels like Dom, to tell people cut off from their own country’s
media, already at war for years, what was really going on.
This work struck a chord because Pasha was from Crimea him
self, from Yevpatoriya, a resort town on the Black Sea famous for
healing water and mud cures. But eventually, especially after the
Russian annexation in 2014, it was healthier to leave. So at some
point he moved to Irpin, a city just outside Kyiv to the northwest,
across the Irpin river. This too sold itself as a health resort and agreat place for sport; even better, it had an annual film festival and
was really close to the capital, where he could pursue his acting.
He became a regular performer at the Koleso theatre in Kyiv, a gem
of a building recently rescued from being Sovietera flats. It was ti
ny, with a company of 16 and space on the first floor for only 70
people, crammed almost up to the stage. On the ground floor was a
space where the audience could take part in plays themselves, pro
fessionals and amateurs together.
Acting had bitten him early. At 17 he made his first film, a hor
rorthriller called “Shtolnya” (The Pit), in which a group of stu
dents uncovered a pit, left from the second world war, with terri
ble secrets at the bottom of it and no obvious means of escape. His
more natural slot was in comedyhorror, where a few hapless stu
dents would be chasing girls one minute and devils the next. In
“Unforgotten Shadows” (2013), an accident at a university released
demons who would kill the whole campus unless he and his mates
could find the Carpathian warlocks who had originally locked
them up. Only slightly more seriously, in “#SelfieParty” (2016) he
played a policeman trying to shut down a drunken orgy and find
out, from four semiconscious students, how a dead body had
turned up next morning on the lawn. His most sober film was “The
Fight Rules” (2016), in which a boxer, his friend, tried to resist the
mobsters who were pressing him to throw a fight. “There’s a single
rule in life and in the fight,” the boxer bravely told one villain: “you
win or you lose.” “It’s not like that in life,” the villain sneered back.
Many Ukrainians knew his voice better than his face. He
dubbed the Ukrainian versions of “The Hobbit” and the remake of
“The Lion King”, both stories of reclaiming lost treasure and lost
ancestral lands. In the Hobbit he was Bilbo Baggins, another con
fused and fearful character who steadily grew in courage and in
the end defeated Smaug, a terrifying dragon who had ravaged the
land with fire. Bilbo dreamed and sang of green meadows on his
journey. Pasha’s profile picture, as the Russian threat drew nearer,
was a yellow Ukrainian field.
In 2021 he had actually been making a war film, set in Luhansk
and called “Mirny (Peace)21”. When he turned up at the tdfoffice
in Irpin he looked much less good at fighting. He had hardly ever
handled weapons, unless you counted the baseball bat with which
he whacked halfvisible demons in mystical forests in “Shadows”,
or his fake police pistol in “#SelfieParty”. Luckily, his main job
would be to help the proper army behind the lines. With tens of
thousands of others, housewives, lawyers, shopkeepers, football
ers, he now spent his days learning basic first aid, how to make up
emergency bags and the safe evacuation of buildings. He was also
taught the basics of knife fighting and the use of rpg7 antitank
launchers, and did drills with wooden rifles in the snow. But as the
publicity for “The Fight Rules” ran, “Your Spirit is your Weapon.”
On Instagram he urged everyone to unite! And volunteer.
The lessons were needed quickly. Within days, the Russians
began their bombardment of Irpin. On March 1st he posted a grim
and resolute photo of himself in military gear, his hair flattened by
aa army cap, with the Ukrainian flag folded before him. On March
4th, after 48 hours of shelling, he posted a merrier image and mes
sage. “We are smiling because we will manage!” he told his follow
ers. “Everything will go Ukraine’s way. we are working!”
By then the city had been without heating, water or power for
three days. Hundreds of citizens were streaming towards the
bridge over the Irpin river, hoping to cross towards Kyiv. But Ukrai
nian forces had destroyed it to slow the Russian advance, rigging
up instead a perilous crossing of narrow planks and ropes. As
evacuees tried to cross in terrified groups, the Russians shelled
them. His job was now to shield the evacuees and carry their loads,
shepherding them out of danger and plunging back in again.
When his body was found, seven days later, it emerged that he had
taken off his bulletproof vest to give it to a child he was carrying.
It was an elementary mistake for a man in uniform to make.
But then he had never meant to be a soldier. nThe star in a bulletproof vestPavlo (“Pasha”) Romanovych Lee, actor and tvpresenter,
was killed on March 6th, aged 33