Yehor Soboliev Reveals His 18-Year-Old Son Signed a Contract with the AFU

Yehor Soboliev shared the story of his son Mykhailo, who joined the military at 18 after years of studying, volunteering, and working with drones.

My son signed a contract with the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He is 18. This was reported by Yehor Soboliev.

When the invasion began, he was 14. He lived for football and history.

At 15, my son left his football team, where the coach had nicknamed him the Professor in his early years for his ability to control the game in midfield. Mykha’s training moved to the forests — to military courses for youth.

At 16, he put aside his plans to study history and immersed himself in math and physics. At that time, I was commanding a UAV company and shared with him the analysis of the drone war we were inventing.

At 17, Mykha gave my unit his first self-built and test-flown drone, got a job in drone production, and enrolled at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in the newly opened “Robotics” program.

On his 18th birthday, he asked me to mobilize him into our unit. I told him then that the role of pilots would gradually decrease, while that of engineers would grow. I suggested he continue studying, developing drones, and, if needed, testing them with us in the Zaporizhzhia region. He began visiting our front-line workshop to help — and then disappeared. He even quit his job at a mil-tech company, where he’d been focused on R&D and constantly praised.

For five months, I tried to find out what was going on in his life, getting only short replies that everything was fine. A month ago, Mykha confessed that since May, he’s been flying with a volunteer unit and has already completed about a hundred missions with fixed-wing reconnaissance drones in the Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, and Donetsk directions. And that in October, he would sign an official contract.

I advised him to join the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Drone Systems Force. That’s what he wanted — and he joined one of its renowned regiments.

I’m proud. I pray. And I think of how hard it must be for Marichka Padalko, who now has to worry for two.

Good luck, Mykhailo Soboliev.