Yellow-blue and white-red flags waved together on Independence Square in Rivne, where they said goodbye to 33-year-old Pole Krzysztof Tyfel and 20-year-old Bohdan Dzedzela.

They never met, grew up in different countries, but both loved Ukraine and fought for its freedom, TSN reports.

At Rivne's Maidan Nezalezhnosti, they said goodbye to yesterday's 20-year-old schoolboy Bohdan Dzedzela and 33-year-old Polish scout Krzysztof Tyfel.

Each of them has its own life story.

"He is a Pole by nationality, but with a big Ukrainian heart," the brothers say. 

Krzysztof came with other foreigners to teach our defenders the tactics of fighting.

"He was a scout in Poland, he said that one day he woke up, looked in the mirror and realized that he couldn't sit like that and do nothing," - recounts his friend.

"Krzysztof followed his heart, he didn't have to. He wasn't interested in money, he was here for his own money. He was buying ammunition," says a volunteer friend.

He could not calmly look at the atrocities of the Russians in Ukraine, say his friends.

They realize that Ukraine needs help to stop the aggressor.

"Poland, Lithuania, Latvia - they are all in danger.

Putin is like Hitler, he also wanted Poland to join Russia, but it won't be like that," the friend adds. 

Krzysztof decided that his place on the battlefield was with his students.

"The Poles have truly shown themselves to be a brotherly people, that's who is really a brotherly people for us," emphasizes the mayor of Rivne, Oleksandr Tretyak.  

20-year-old Bohdan Dzedzela also considered defending Ukraine his calling.

He signed his first contract with the armed forces right after school - at 18.

According to his classmates, he last contacted his mother in mid-March.

He was considered missing.

Everyone hoped that he was alive to the last.

"When we found out that he was found... we hoped that he was alive, maybe in captivity, or somewhere, well, we couldn't imagine that he was killed," says classmate Yana.  

Nowadays, they say goodbye to both in Rivne under blue-yellow and white-red flags.

The service is conducted jointly by Orthodox and Catholic priests.

Bohdan died for Ukraine in the Mykolayiv region, Krzysztof died in the east.

For Bohdan, Rivne is his hometown.

For Krzysztof, it also became his family, here they fulfill his last will.

"Bury him in Rivne.

He loved Rivne.

In their free time, they walked from one end of the city to the other," says Ivan Pantyukh, head of the unit. 

Bohdan and part of Krzysztof's ashes were buried on the Alley of Fame in Rivne.

And the parents took some of them home - to Poland.

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