Sotnyk Andrienko (Timur Barotov)

Sotnyk Andrienko was an associate and assistant of Vsevolod Petriv, originally from Poltava region. After the outbreak of revolutionary events at the front, he was elected chairman of the corps council of Ukrainians of the Third Siberian Corps. Together with Vsevolod Petriv, he participated in the creation of the Hordiienko regiment, fought his way through the Belarusian forests to Ukraine, and took part in the suppression of the Arsenal uprising in Kyiv.

Throughout the revolutionary events, he was Petriv's first assistant and made great efforts to protect the Hordiienko regiment from disorganization and theft of property. Later, as the head of the regiment's second company, he fought for Independence against the Russian Bolsheviks and crossed almost all of Ukraine, up to the Crimea. Andrienko's company included those Haidamaks who had formed the regiment at the front. And during the struggle, his combat unit grew to 350 men.

This is what Vsevolod Petriv himself wrote in his memoirs about his sotnyk: "This Andrienko is a strange man. He was a "warrant officer" from a school teachers, wounded in both legs during the World War, one leg became a little shorter and he limped. He was hot, unrestrained, and had just gotten into a big trouble in Zhytomyr: he met Hrushevsky at the train station, approached him, and said: "Why the hell did you bring the Germans, father? It's the devil knows what, not politics - a disgrace to the whole world: a socialist, and he treats the Kaiser like a man." Hearing this conversation, a sentry from the central Ukraine jumped up and shoved Andrienko in a rather rude manner: "How dare you talk to the head of the government like that," but Andrienko replied: "He (Hrushevsky) has a great honor, that we, the people, elected him, not me, that he is my head of government."

Andrienko always remained a representative of the left-wing political forces and was the embodiment of the sentiments that prevailed among the ordinary Cossacks. Brave and desperate, he was often exposed to danger and was wounded in battle more than once. He died in 1919 from spotted typhus.

Victoria Skuba based on materials by Vsevolod Petriv