Ukrainian Immigrant Who Saved a Soldier in Combat Dies in South Lebanon

Staff Sgt. (res.) Alexander Filin, 29, from Haifa, was killed on Thursday in an explosive device blast during an operational mission in the village of A-Taybe in southern Lebanon. Several other soldiers, including officers and reservists, were wounded in the same incident, and the IDF is still investigating the circumstances.

Filin’s life story had already become known in Israel before his death. He came alone from Ukraine about 14 years ago through the Naale program, studied at Aloni Yitzhak boarding school, and later lived in Ra’anana. He served as a fighter and sniper in the Nahal Brigade and was chosen to receive the President’s Award.

In a 2018 interview with local outlet Tzomet HaSharon, after being honored by the president, Filin said that as a new immigrant he was not accepted into an elite unit because his Hebrew was weak and he did not yet have security clearance. “So I chose to enlist in Nahal,” he said. Reflecting on his service, he added, “You deal with many difficult things in the IDF and you do not think about outside life. We protect the citizens and the country.”

Filin also described a combat incident at the Shuafat checkpoint in which a terrorist tried to attack a fellow soldier. “I shot him and basically neutralized him, and that saved my friend’s life,” he said. “It is a very high honor. Not everyone gets it, so apparently they saw that I was doing good things,” he said of the President’s Award. Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav eulogized him, saying Filin had left his routine and loved ones to defend Israel and its citizens out of “a sense of mission, responsibility and love of the land.”