Fedir Stryhun, the Ukrainian actor and director who led Lviv’s Maria Zankovetska Theatre for more than three decades, died in Lviv on 23 October 2026 at the age of 86. His son, the actor Nazar Stryhun, said he died after a long illness.
Born on 1 November 1939 in Tomashivka, in the Uman district of today’s Cherkasy Oblast, Stryhun graduated in 1961 from the Karpenko-Kary Kyiv Institute of Theatre Arts. He joined the Zankovetska Theatre in Lviv as an actor in 1965 and became its artistic director and chief director in 1987.
Over his career he played more than 100 stage roles, among them Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Richard III. On screen he appeared in films including Annychka (1968), The Lost Letter (1972), Babylon XX (1979), The Zaporozhian Beyond the Danube (1986) and Stone Soul (1989).
He received the Shevchenko National Prize in 1978, was named People’s Artist of the Ukrainian SSR in 1979, and became an academician of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine in 2017. His wife, the actress Taisiya Lytvynenko, died in 2025. Lviv mayor Andriy Sadovyi offered condolences to his family and the theatre community.
