Writing for Tracks Magazine, Benjamin Ryan told a small part of a unique family’s story. The feature was called The Kid from Ukraine with Surfing on the Brain.
About two Ukrainian boys, Danylo and Sasha Smirnov, who, raised among the waves of the Mentawai Islands, dreamed of a famous surfing life someday. The writer pointed out the impossible contrast between the surfing lives of the two brothers. The younger one chasing bombs of perfect Mentawai barrels. The older one who found himself in a place where the bombs were real. At the time, no one knew where their road would lead. But for older brother Danylo, we now know it ended on the battlefields of Ukraine. Here is his mother’s remembrance.
Though thousands of his people did not know his real name, they did know his call sign. Surfer. And that was enough. For the people who fought beside him, it came to mean much more than the sport he loved. If Surfer was at your side, they would know there was someone they could trust with their life.
But his story did not begin in war. It began by the ocean. Danylo grew up living the life thousands of young surfers dream about. On a surf camp in the Mentawai. The best waves on earth at his doorstep. For him, this was not a once-a-year holiday or a beautiful picture in a magazine. It was his life. And surfing was who he was. Until the overwhelming pull of his love for his own country changed his entire trajectory.
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Danylo was only sixteen.
Leaving the Indo dream behind, Danylo reported to a simple checkpoint in Kyiv and offered to help in any way he could, carrying food, ammunition, doing whatever was asked of him. And that he did, anonymously, in the name of defending Kyiv.
After Russian forces withdrew from Kyiv, his family insisted that he leave Ukraine and continue his education. Danylo enrolled at University to study psychology, and a different life opened in front of him again: studying in Europe, then the possibility of returning to the Mentawai to do what he loved most. He could have chosen safety. He could have chosen the ocean. He could have told himself that war was the responsibility of grown men. But after six months of study, Danylo returned to Ukraine. He was now 17-years-old. He appealed to every Ukrainian military unit he could find. He told them he did not need money. He only needed food and a chance to be useful. His decision was shocking because everyone understood what kind of life he was giving up. He was not trying to escape a difficult future in the city. He had a choice on the other side of the world. There was family, the Mentawai, the waves. But he chose to put all of that aside for love of country. Danylo’s choice inspired all.
Because the men fighting beside him had also left ordinary lives behind: children, wives, jobs, sport, plans, homes. The story of this 17-year-old Surfer seemed to say:
Right now, there is something more important. And if we do this together, one day everyone will be able to return to what they left behind.
Two days before his eighteenth birthday, Danylo was allowed to join the 3rd Assault Brigade. By the age of 18, he was the commander of an assault group in the 2nd Mechanised Battalion. Badly wounded by shrapnel, he went through painful rehabilitation and then returned to service. There he became chief sergeant within the elite International Legion of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine. His fellow soldiers remember him as a fearless leader who always moved at the front of his group. He was repeatedly decorated for his service and courage.
Amidst all of this, Danylo married and was soon to be a father of a son. And his biggest dream for the future became simple: The war would end, he would return to the ocean, and he would put his son on a surfboard. But Danylo never got the chance to put his son on that board. Danylo Smirnov was killed on a combat mission shortly before the child was born.
Thousands came to say goodbye to Danylo Smirnov. Family, Soldiers, Friends.
People who had fought beside him. But most of all, people who only knew him by his call sign. Surfer, the hero of Kyiv. The city’s main street was closed for kilometers as a full military convoy and honor guard carried the fallen soldier to his final resting place. And in that moment, something impossibly symbolic happened. The little boy with dreams of becoming a famous surfer had become Ukraine’s most famous and honored surfer.
But Surfer’s story does not end there. His younger brother Sasha, living the dream in Indonesia, continues the life Danylo once planned to return to. And one day, when Danylo’s son is old enough, Sasha dreams of putting his nephew on a surfboard. The way his father had planned to. And to tell him why thousands of people knew his father by one short word: Surfer.
In loving memory of Danylo Smirnov
2005-2026
