My name is Victor Frydman. I have been called by several names: Zeev in Hebrew, Vovk in Ukrainian and Wolf in English (they all mean wolf) … but in this new chapter of my life, I want to be a new me, or better, the real me.

I was born in 1993, in Dnipro, Ukraine. My only formal music training was at guitar school, which I attended for 4 years. I have always been a sportsman since my youth, doing an uncountable type of sport. When I was a kid, I won twice the world championship of Ballroom dance.After graduating from school, I attended Alfred Nobel University of Economics and Law. In 2012, I achieved 2nd place at the Ukrainian Boxing National Championships. A year later, I recorded a hip-hop album with my own songs. I performed in clubs and had my own concerts. During my fourth year of university, I spent 2 years in Israel to learn Hebrew and completed my fifth year online in 2015, earning a master’s degree in management.

I joined the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) where I served as a loader, radio operator, mortar operator, and machine gunner in the 7th Armored Brigade “Hativa Sheva”. Later on, I applied to the Tank Commanders Course and finished the course with the highest marks. I retired with the rank of Captain. I also owned a business in Israel in the sports field and during the same period, I worked as a Krav Maga coach.

In March 2022, at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, I rushed to Ukraine to fight for my native country. During my time on the frontline, I came to appreciate more and more how music can be driving in the moment of most discomfort. I started in the President Platoon and helped clean Kyiv from spies revealing our positions and thwarting sabotage teams of the russian army. Afterward, some Israeli friends and I created a new team I called Masada6 lead by Denis Desyatnik. With this team, we signed a new contract with GUR’s Intelligence International Legion. I was the second in command and my main roles were to receive targets from the High Quarters, plan missions, coordinate operations with other forces, and direct activities on the battlefield. We worked in Marianivka and then Kharkiv, where I first met Giulia Jasmine Schiff, callsign Kida. She’s an Italian former Air Force Pilot and since 2019, activist against gender based violence and institutional violence. After these missions, the team leader was sent by the unit to another place and the team split up. I took anyone who still wanted to fight and recruited new foreigners.

I became team leader and the team was renamed Masada. I joined forces with Daniel Lashuk, aka Deni Vendetti, or better Mojahed. We united my team and his team, Vendetta, in one platoon. We worked once in Bakhmut against collaborators and agents, when it was still a beautiful city. We became the RUG platoon under the 59th Brigade of the Army, working in Mykolaiv’s region, pushing toward Kherson, doing intelligence, assault, and diversion missions. Meanwhile, I also served there as a tank commander, clearing tree lines and opening the way for infantry to assault enemy bases.

The last mission I participated in,  was hell, and an umpteenth shell shock got me. Constant, debilitating migraines forced me to quit, hoping to heal. I later became the director of a medical clinic. Kida left the team she had joined after I was wounded to help me get better. We kept helping Ukraine with our charitable organization by doing missions to bring humanitarian aid close to the frontlines and creating a stomatology clinic on wheels still driving all around the frontlines to help treat our people and our soldiers (Azov especially) nearby the most hotspots of war where they struggle to get basic health care. A second ambulance of ours is currently borrowed by a military hospital.

On San Valentine 2023 we officially disclosed we wanted to get married. I proposed to her in my hometown, Dnipro, on the stage of our friends’ Grandma’s Smuzi live show. On May 7th 2023, on the anniversary of when we first met, Kida became my wife under Chuppah, in the beautiful Bevilacqua Castle, Italy.

During my participation in combat operations for the integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, I was awarded three medals for various actions performed while carrying out combat tasks and my wife two.  We later discovered that a picture of our wedding day in Dnipro city’s office has been chosen to be part of a limited edition Ukrainian original post stamp collection dedicated to love during war time. 

During summer 2023, in Israel, I undergone 2 months of rehabilitation for the TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) I suffered in Ukraine. On our way back to Ukraine to work as instructors with Kida, I was compelled to return to war and defend my other homeland, from another invasion. The invasion of my ancestral land by Hamas terrorists, the 7th of October has shocked everyone. I decided to reenlist as a volunteer in the IDF to defend once again my people’s right to exist. Kida I have been mobilized as infantry to Gaza and Rafah and later to the border of Lebanon. I served in the most dangerous hotspots and witnessed again the cruelty and evilness firsthand. I saw the aftermath of the Black Shabbat, I fought terrorists hiding in schools and hospitals were later I have been escorting humanitarian AID and brand new medical equipment, I have protected and help evacuate palestinian refugees and now I’m protecting Israel northern border from the daily bombings on civilian villages and ground attacks on our territories by the Hezbollah terrorists.

Besides my military service, I want to pursue something I love for myself and my family. With my wife, I am embarking on a dual music project featuring metal and acoustic rock, through which I hope to express myself and have a positive impact.

By embracing my vocation for singing and writing songs and music, I want to leave behind a past full of pain and losses and be free as I am Frydman (a free man), so: Victor Frei, in German or more precisely, Yiddish.

Remember, I am a free… we are all free!