Italy tragically enters the death toll of the war in Ukraine with the name of Edy Ongaro, a 46-year-old Venetian who was killed on Thursday 31 March by a hand grenade while fighting with the Donbass separatist militias. The fact was reported in the evening by the Northeast Red Star Collective, with a post on their Facebook Profile, then it was confirmed by Massimo Pin, Edy’s close friend, who had the task of informing the family. Ongaro, a life not without problems, was in the Donbass since 2015, after leaving Italy in a hurry, formally as a wanted man.
Criminal records and expatriation
He had been involved in a fight in a bar in Portogruaro (Venice), where he hit the operator with a kick in the abdomen, eventually throwing himself at a carabiniere. Once the terms of defense had been granted, Ongaro had been released by the judge pending trial, and had disappeared. Since then only news of him had arrived via social media. In Donbass, already at the time, he had enlisted with the separatists of the Prizrak brigade, composed mainly of foreign fighters. For the pro-Russians he had become a kind of hero, heedless of risking his life under bombs to fight against the Kiev government, and alongside «all neo-Russian civilians who have seen hell on earth. This is our day “he wrote when Vladimir Putin signed the decree by which Russia recognized the independence of the Donbass republics from Ukraine.
Battle name “Bozambo”
His nom de guerre was “Bozambo”, in memory of a partisan of the Second World War, and he claimed that to push him to fight with the pro-Russian rebels of the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk would be the memory of the violence inflicted by the fascists on his family . Edy Ongaro lost her life in the village of Adveevka, in the enlarged Donetsk region, on the northern border. According to initial information, the Italian was in a trench with other soldiers when a hand grenade dropped by Ukrainian forces fell. Ongaro would have launched himself with his body on the bomb, to protect his companions, dying instantly. “He was a pure and courageous companion, but fragile,” wrote his friends from the Red Star Collective. “In Italy he had made mistakes. In Donbass he had found his ransom for him ».
