22-year-old Viktor from near Kletsk lasted a month on the front. And then his parents quarreled, dividing the funeral money

Viktor Tsinkevich was born on November 9, 2002, in Zaastraviečča near Kletsk — now a sizable agro-town with almost 2,000 people. From there to the war that took his life, it was a thousand kilometers and a whole era. But the young man barely lived in Zaastraviečča. His father, Pavel Tsinkevich, was a military man, and the family moved to Russia, to Engels in the Saratov region. Thereafter, Viktor's entire life would move across the map — wherever his father was sent to serve.

The family fell apart when the boy was about eight years old. This was in 2010. What exactly happened then, the parents would recount differently in court fifteen years later: his mother, Tatsiana, claimed that his father drank and kicked her out of the house, while his father claimed that it was she who drank and led a dissolute lifestyle, abandoning him and their son and never returning.

The court ultimately believed the father. Be that as it may, from that time on, the mother disappeared from Viktor's life. When he was ten, at a custody hearing, he simply said: he hadn't seen his mom for about two years, the last time was fleetingly, from a car window as it drove past. She doesn't wish him a happy birthday.

His father raised him. And his stepmother – a woman Viktor called mom and who, according to her own words in court, dedicated her life to him, having no children of her own.

Viktor had developmental issues — in 2011, he was only admitted to a special correctional school in Engels. Then there was another school, and when his father was transferred to serve in the Far East, Viktor finished nine grades in the village of Seryshevo, Amur Oblast. Afterwards, he enrolled in the Amur Agrarian College — studying to be an operator of road and construction machinery.

Павялічыць

On June 2, 2023, at the age of twenty, Tsinkevich signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense. He served in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, then near Moscow. He only reached the front, in the zone of the so-called "SMO" (Special Military Operation), on January 27, 2025. He took the call sign "Filin" (Owl).

He only lasted a month at war. On March 3, 2025, Viktor went missing. On March 6, he was killed — near the settlement of Leonidivka in the Dzerzhinsky district of the "DPR". The death certificate dryly stated the cause: acute massive blood loss, multiple injuries, explosion during combat operations. Almost nothing remained of the body — his identity was determined only in November, six months later, by DNA match.

All these months, while the search was underway, while contacting the military unit and the identification department, everything was handled by his stepmother — the same woman he called mom. His biological mother did not contact the unit.

And then the legal disputes began. For a contract soldier killed in the war, the state pays large sums of money, usually more than $100,000. And the father sued to strip his ex-wife of the right to this money, claiming she did not raise their son and had no moral right to receive compensation for him.

The mother defended herself as best she could. She wrote that she secretly met her son in Engels' Kasil Park, bought him ice cream and sweets, that he consulted her about his studies, and that they last corresponded on WhatsApp. But her memories were muddled — she confused the schools he attended and the dates. The court dismissed the correspondence: according to documents, on the day "her son" supposedly wrote to her that he was at war, Viktor was not even close to the front.

The woman also abandoned her daughter Alena — Viktor's half-sister from another man — who was raised by her grandmother in Belarus.

On April 16, 2026, the Engels District Court granted the father's claim. Viktor's mother was stripped of the right to all payments for her son's death — down to the last kopeck.

The young man remained in documents twice: first, as a line in a death certificate, then as a subject of dispute between parents who were dividing the money Russia paid for his death.

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