Family, Friends Remember Eveleth-Native Jimmy Hill, Killed While Caring for Sick Partner in Ukraine

The war between Russia and Ukraine hits closer to home as last week after Eveleth native Jimmy Hill was killed while waiting in line for bread – a harsh reminder of the far-reaching impacts of the conflict.

“When I’d wake up the first thing I would do is check and his message would be ‘made it through the night, still alive.”

Unfortunately, it was a different message Katya Hill received Thursday, March 17th.

Her brother, 68-year-old Jimmy Hill was confirmed to be one of ten people gunned down by Russian forces while waiting in line for bread in the city of Chernihiv.

“Always then as he was reporting that the bombing was getting worse, that it was getting closer, that it was getting more intense,” Katya Hill said.

Jimmy, who was living in Idaho, flew back to Ukraine to care for his partner Irina Teslenko, as she is receiving treatment for severe multiple sclerosis, unable to leave a Ukrainian hospital.

With limited cell service and electricity, Jimmy would post on Facebook trying his best to update his friends and family.

In one he wrote:

And in one of his final posts:

“You can never fully understand the person who, like you’re sitting in the safe room and it’s another person you’re talking to and the bombs are falling around the hospital and the person just cannot leave.” Ukrainian Sasha Kniazieva was one of Jimmy’s friends keeping in touch.

The two met in Ukraine back in 2007. A perfect friendship — she was working on her English, and he was teaching the language there.

“He was really easy to chat with, he didn’t really care if you were like not pronouncing words not correctly.

She says hill immediately invited her to an English-speaking club, while she helped him meet more friends in the country.

His personality pushed her to eventually attend and graduate UMD.

“He was like a representation of all this Midwest,” she said, with a fond smile.

“Basically he was the first American who really inspired me to go the U.S. and I went to Minnesota to study for like I got my 2nd master’s degree in Minnesota. And Jimmy was basically like the gateway to this American world and American culture,” said Kniazieva.

She said Jimmy understood how important it is the west supports Ukraine, as Vladimir Putin continues his unprovoked assault on her country.

“You know like the basic thought that if Ukraine won’t stand Russia won’t’ stop there,” Kniazieva said.

“I think that Jimmy understood and I think that Jimmy liked Ukraine and he actually came there and he stayed there was working there for 20 years, and he, I think that he had reasons he saw that Ukraine is a part of Europe and Ukraine shares this Western values,” she said.

And Jimmy’s sister, in a virtual interview with the Associated Press from Pittsburgh Saturday, says even in his own bleak situation, he’d think of others struggling in the country they call home.

“Jimmy remained positive and ever the helper,” Katya said.

“He went out to stand in store and bread lines with Ukrainians. He brought back cookies and chocolate for the nurses. He found a woman with 4 young children living near the hospital to share food, use her internet when it was working, and trying to find a way out of Chernihiv for her and others.”

As Jimmy Hill is remembered, his friends and family hope other Americans remember to be empathetic like him.

“A really nice guy a really helpful guy like an open-minded person,” Kniazieva recalled.

According to Katya Hill, Irina’s mother had been told about Jimmy’s death, but she didn’t want to tell her daughter yet.

The Hill family is still waiting to hear directly from the U.S. State Department to know where Jimmy’s body is.