This is what those who knew him say about the suicide of a resident of the regional center, a deputy of the Lutsk City Council, Sviatoslav Kovalchuk. The "emergency" happened last Saturday morning. Sviatoslav Kovalchuk threw himself from the balcony of his own apartment on the seventh floor. At 10:20 he was taken to the Lutsk City Clinical Hospital. But, unfortunately, the doctors could no longer save his life.

Since an investigation into the extraordinary event is still ongoing, the head of the investigative department of the Lutsk city prosecutor's office, Oleksandr Liashuk, said briefly: — At present, all versions are being checked, including, in particular, driving to suicide...

Sviatoslav Kovalchuk headed the LLC "Vtoroptresursy." He was a deputy of the city council from the "Batkivshchyna" party. The head of the Lutsk city party organization "Batkivshchyna," Hryhorii Pustovit, with whom we spoke by phone, said: — On January 23, Sviatoslav had a birthday — he turned 35. That day he was in Kyiv. I called him on his mobile phone and congratulated him. Sviatoslav thanked me and said that, supposedly, when I return to Lutsk, we will definitely meet. Sviatoslav returned on Saturday, but we never met. We didn't have time... That day we had party meetings. During the break, someone came up to me and asked: "Do you have such a deputy in your party?" And said the surname. I answered that we do. And I heard: "Not anymore"...

Hryhorii Pustovit emphasized that he knew the deceased both as a fellow party member and as a person — "very decent and wise in life." Sviatoslav was not poor, but he never boasted about it. As for his character, he belonged to those who "don't talk behind your back, but say to your face what they think." He did not have, as they say, a golden middle: if black, then black, and if white — then white.

Close friends say that since childhood Sviatoslav was afraid of heights. To get rid of this unmanly, as he probably considered it, weakness, he took up parachuting. No one could even imagine that this would be his last jump. In a word, those who knew Sviatoslav Kovalchuk cannot explain such a fatal step of his, because suicide, in their opinion, in no way fits with this person's outlook on life.

Sviatoslav was buried yesterday. Many Lutsk residents came to the funeral home to say goodbye to him and express condolences to his wife, who was left a widow with two children.