Volunteers risk landmines, drone attacks and shelling to help return fallen soldiers to families
Oleksiy Yukov, leader of Ukraine's Platsdarm volunteer group, which retrieves Ukrainian and Russian bodies from the battlefields of eastern Ukraine. The group looks for belongings that could identify the body, and sends unidentified remains for DNA analysis. Photograph: Daniel McLaughlinWhat remains of nine Russian lives lies in body bags and on plastic sheets spread out in a sunny field in eastern Ukraine.
“So many people are being killed but we must keep our humanity. Everyone should have a dignified burial, so we don’t end up with more of the ‘unknown soldiers’ that we had after the second World War, when thousands of people were simply erased from history and put in mass graves,” he adds. Belongings found on the bodies of Russian soldiers retrieved from the battlefields of eastern Ukraine by Ukrainian volunteer group Platsdarm. Photograph: Daniel McLaughlin
Unidentified remains are sent for DNA analysis and, once an identity has been established, Ukrainian bodies are returned to relatives and Russian ones are prepared for an exchange of troops killed in action that takes place at the neighbours’ border. Yukov hopes that in 80 years his compatriots will not still be finding the remains of soldiers from this war, just as he has unearthed victims of the second World War.
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