Katya Hill tried to talk her brother out of it. She urged Jimmy Hill to postpone his trip to Ukraine after seeing reports of Russian tanks lining up on the border. But he needed to help his longtime partner with progressive multiple sclerosis.
“He said, ‘I don’t know what I would do if I lost her, I should try to do everything possible to try to stop the progression of multiple sclerosis,’” Katya said. “My brother sacrificed his life for her.”
James “Jimmy” Hill, 68, was killed in a Russian attack on the northern Ukrainian city of Chernigov, reported Thursday, while his partner, Irina Teslenko, was being treated at a local hospital. His family says that she and her mother are trying to leave the city, but due to her condition, they will need an ambulance and it was not clear when or if this would happen.
In an interview Saturday from Pittsburgh, Hill’s sister called her brother’s relationship with Irina “a beautiful love story, but unfortunately it has a tragic end.”
Katya Hill said that Irina’s illness had progressed to the point that she had lost the ability to walk and most of her arms. She said her brother, an Eveleth, Minnesota native who lived in Driggs, Idaho, spent months trying to secure treatment to stop the progression of the disease and finally made arrangements for the treatment in February.
Katya said that her brother thought the world would not allow an invasion.
Katya said they met when her brother, who taught social work and forensic psychology at universities around the world, taught classes in Ukraine. He knew immediately that he was in love, and they spent years together, talking on the phone for hours every day when Jimmy returned to the United States.
Katya said that in the last few weeks, as explosions became more frequent and resources dwindled, her brother dreamed of moving Ukrainian families to the US to create a “little Ukraine” on his Airbnb property he owned in Idaho and Montana. . She said her brother loved Ukraine, and even on the day he was killed, her friends helped her understand that he had decided to stay to be with Teslenko and her mother in the hospital.
It was initially reported that Jimmy was shot while waiting in line for bread, but Katya said the family received new details through their senators and from Jimmy’s friends in Ukraine on Saturday.
Katya said that Jimmy and a friend who lives near the hospital went to the area where they heard there were waiting buses to evacuate people who wanted to leave the city along a safe corridor. With over a thousand people already in line, Jimmy told a friend that he was going back to the hospital. A friend told Katya that the Russian shelling started as he was leaving, and the explosion that killed her brother left her friend deaf in one ear.
Katya said her family is still waiting to hear from the US State Department directly for details on where his body is.
The Chernihiv police and the State Department confirmed the death of the American, but did not establish his identity. The Associated Press contacted the State Department to confirm the details of Hill’s death, but had not received any information as of early Saturday.
In poignant Facebook posts weeks before his death, Hill described “indiscriminate bombing” of the city under siege. Katya said that he described the increasing difficulties in the Facebook Messenger group, starting each day by saying that he was still alive.
But electricity and heat were cut off, and food and supplies became scarcer. Katya said that he would go wait in line for food and supplies and bring whatever he could for the hospital staff.
Most of the hospital’s patients moved into the basement bomb shelter, but Irina and her mother stayed on the upper floors due to the cold so she could continue her treatment.
Katya said that Irina’s mother had been informed of Jimmy’s death, but she did not want to tell her daughter. She said they were hoping for help to evacuate back to their home village southeast of Kyiv, where Irina’s father was waiting for them, but it’s not clear if they can find an ambulance to take them or a safe route to travel.
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Associated Press journalist Derek Karikari contributed to this report from New York.