“Walls Can Be Restored, but Memory Cannot”: The Story of Physicist Mykhailo Vysotskyi, Whose Home Was Destroyed by a russian Attack, Becomes Part of the Museum of Civilian Voices Founded by the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation

Science communicator, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, and Associate Professor at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv Mykhailo Vysotskyi lost his home in the russian attack on Kyiv on July 2, 2026. The scientist’s apartment was completely burned out, leaving only charred walls behind. The fire destroyed a unique family archive that had been collected for more than a hundred years — the work of his entire life — and left Mykhailo without a roof over his head. The scientist shared his story with the Museum of Civilian Voices founded by the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation.

“Walls can always be restored, but memory cannot. Restoring the same scientific work is incredibly difficult. This was an apartment where the cultural and scientific heritage of my family from the past 150 years was kept. There were books, paintings by famous Ukrainian artists, all our family photographs, and scientific works by my father and me,” says Mykhailo.

From the first days of the full-scale war, Mykhailo remained in Kyiv. Since 2022, he had watched the enemy destroy the city, and in 2026, the disaster affected his own family as well. The first strike damaged the building, while the second attack nearly cost him his life. Mykhailo was at home when the strike hit: the blast wave, flames, and shards of glass engulfed the apartment. Fortunately, he escaped with only a few cuts.

“During this strike, two stairwells of the building were completely destroyed. They were burned to the ground. The other two stairwells survived, but it is absolutely impossible to live there now. It was a ballistic missile. I saw experts working and collecting fragments of the missile directly from the burned-out apartments. We were left without a roof over our heads,” Mykhailo recalls the moment of the tragedy.

Mykhailo Vysotskyi, together with his family and neighbors, waited out the danger in an underground passage, and when they went outside at dawn, they saw that almost nothing was left of their home. The enemy destroyed the apartment, the sense of security, and the place that held countless memories.

“The second strike completely destroyed the building and everything we had. We basically ran out in whatever we were wearing: I was in shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. That is all I had left. At that point, I had neither my mobile phone nor my passport, international passport, documents related to my studies, nor documents related to my work,” the scientist says.

This tragedy not only destroyed the scientist’s normal life, but also deprived him of the opportunity to continue popularizing science. Since 2023, Mykhailo Vysotskyi has been actively developing his YouTube channel, which has already accumulated more than one million views in total. However, Mykhailo says that he is now forced to put his work on hold due to a lack of space, equipment, and inspiration. At the same time, he sincerely believes that, eventually, his desire to explain physics in simple terms will certainly return.

“Every day, I have to deal with a huge number of problems. It is very difficult to record new videos because it requires time, inspiration, peace of mind, and the right conditions — when I can focus specifically on physics, when I can focus on what our world is like without thinking about restoring documents, money, an apartment, or how to help my parents. I would not want to go down in history as the physicist whose home was destroyed by a missile. If I am to go down in history, then it should be as a person who proved something interesting, who was able to tell people something important,” Mykhailo admits.

Rinat Akhmetov will help resolve Mykhailo Vysotskyi’s housing situation. The founder of the Foundation and president of FC Shakhtar decided several days ago to purchase and provide the scientist with a new apartment.

Watch Mykhailo Vysotskyi’s story here: https://bit.ly/4wQCCaW

The collection of the Museum of Civilian Voices founded by the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation already numbers more than 145,000 stories about the war. This is the largest collection in the world of testimonies from civilians affected by russia’s war against Ukraine.