The landscape, a bucolic setting of hills and lakes, loses its charm as soon as those present discover the unbearable stench emanating from the corpses. Oleksii Yukov's acolytes have lined up the 12 bags on the meadow. Some remains are simply a mixture of bones, clothing, and unrecognizable debris.
Most are bodies of Russian soldiers. Oleksii kneels over one of the deceased and grabs his jaw. Although he never studied anything close to forensic medicine, Oleksii has developed a deep knowledge of this specialty over the years.
"It has flies but no larvae yet. It will be easy to recognize him by his teeth," he comments to establish that the remains are recent. One of those present asks him how he can bear the smell, and the Ukrainian volunteer replies: "Before, he was also a human being".
The recovery of remains of former Russian soldiers is as vital as that of the Ukrainians themselves, as Oleksii insists. "It allows us to use these bodies to exchange them for our soldiers," he argues.
The "Ukrainian" remains are much more difficult to identify. Oleksii doesn't even know how many people they correspond to. They are transported in a dozen plastic bags. They were found less than a week ago in Yampil, about 30 kilometers to the north. "They are pieces. The animals had eaten them," explains the head of the Platsdarm group, which has been dedicated for years to recovering human remains on the various war fronts in the east and north of Ukraine.
"We have collected more than 2,500 bodies, Russian and Ukrainian, since the start of the general invasion in 2022," he adds.
The bones and pieces of what was once a person will have to undergo DNA analysis to determine their identity, but as Yukov says, "now at least, after 3 years of waiting, a family will be able to bury their son or father."
Elmira and her husband Yuri show a photo of their son Ernest, missing in the war.Albert Lores
The troubled task undertaken by the volunteers of Platsdarm every week is part of the effort that the Ukrainian authorities maintain to rescue the remains of the thousands and thousands of soldiers "missing in action," the infamous MIAs, which accumulate as the war between this country and Russia continues its course, generating a special unease among a similar number of families.
The Ukrainian Commissioner for Missing Persons in Special Situations, Artur Dobroserdov, maintains a database that includes about 70,000 "missing" persons -military and civilians, included-, of which, he says, at least about 8,000 are in captivity and therefore alive.
"In addition, we have managed to identify another 1,807 prisoners by searching [photos] on the internet, but they have not been confirmed as such by the International Red Cross," he clarifies.
Sitting in his office in Kiev, Dobroserdov tells this newspaper that he intends to intensify this campaign, even though the war continues, as past experiences like Vietnam have shown that, over time, this goal becomes increasingly complex.
When the Vietnam War ended in 1973, the Americans counted nearly 2,500 soldiers as MIA, even after the release of prisoners. It was not until the late 1980s that the governments of both countries reached an agreement to allow the search for the remains of those still missing. Hundreds of bodies have been recovered over all these years, but the whereabouts of about 1,600 soldiers are still unknown.
The lack of news led to all sorts of conspiracy theories about the presence of alleged prisoners hidden by the Vietnamese, which resonated so much in American popular culture that it even inspired the second installment of the Rambo saga.
"We want to recover the majority of our people," Dobroserdov asserts.
According to the figures he handles, since Moscow launched the general war in 2022, Ukraine has managed to have the Russians deliver 8,835 bodies, and just this year, exchanges have allowed the recovery of 4,241, a number that reflects both an improvement in coordination with the enemy army forces, and the increasing toll that this war is taking.
The Ukrainian authorities announced the latest exchange of this kind on the 16th, when they received 909 bodies, the same number as in March and April. In exchange, they delivered the remains of 36 fallen Russians.
"Since October of last year, the quantity [of bodies exchanged] has increased dramatically," he adds.
Dobroserdov's employees have incorporated facial recognition systems to identify the victims of the enemy army, which they use in the offices nearby. The head of that department, Oleg (only gives his name), 40 years old, shows a video of a Ukrainian prisoner lying on the ground. A Russian soldier shoots him several times. The official "copies" the face of the soldier and compares it with the thousands of pages of social networks and other databases they are offered. "That's how we found this photo of Volodimir Lukashov, born in 1975. We compared it with our database and confirmed that he was an MIA. A soldier from Sumy, who was executed in Kursk. We know that the video was uploaded to the internet on November 13, 2024, and he was killed on November 9," he recounts.
The work of the Ukrainian Commissioner for Missing Persons intertwines with that of other local institutions such as the War Prisoners Coordination Headquarters or the 25 laboratories dependent on various institutions where the identity of the human remains received by the authorities is certified.
"We started being able to process 1,000 DNA samples per month and now we can handle 10,000, just in the laboratories of the Ministry of the Interior," says Ruslan Abbasov, number two at the Forensics Center of the aforementioned department.
Abbasov's team, which learned from experts trained in the search for missing persons from the Bosnian war, has collected between 110,000 and 120,000 DNA samples from relatives of soldiers missing in action. Abbasov adds that this figure can be misleading as there are many cases where genetic material is collected from several relatives of the same MIA.
So far, the laboratories under the Ministry of the Interior have managed to identify 10,500 human remains, but the process is as slow as it is complex:
"The bodies have to be recovered on the battlefield. Then, a forensic expert identifies them, and the police open a criminal investigation. At the same time, the relatives receive a certificate that their loved one is an MIA and they have to go donate DNA to the police," Abbasov adds.
As he speaks, Abbasov walks through the facilities of one of the mentioned laboratories where several workers grind bone samples to extract DNA. The remains of the corpses are washed, dried, and finally a centrifuge turns them into powder.
Despite the efforts of the local administration, the persistent bleeding on the Ukrainian battlefields has increased the number of MIAs, raising anxiety among their families, who, as Dobroserdov acknowledges, "never tire of searching for their people."
On April 13th, a hundred mothers and wives of Ukrainian Marines gathered in the city of Odesa, carrying national flags with portraits of their missing relatives. They also placed empty chairs in memory of those who are not there.
"Do not remain silent. Fight for them as they fought for us in Krinki," read one of the banners.
The organization "Krinki, the way home" has been sponsoring these gatherings for months to keep alive the case of the hundreds of soldiers whose fate is unknown after the bloody battle that took place on the banks of the Dnipro River in the province of Jersón between the summer of 2023 and the same date the following year.
Nadiya Bohdanova lost contact with her 24-year-old son, Alexander Sergevich, on December 9th. That day, she received a call to go to official premises where she was handed the dreaded document that no family wants to receive: her son was one more MIA from that brutal confrontation.
"He had already made two landings in Krinki. In the second one, he was injured by an explosion, with a concussion. He didn't tell me to not worry," she recounts over the phone.
Nothing is known about the rest, including Sergevich.
"The Ukrainian mother refuses to accept that Sergevich is dead." Even when the company commander told her that "he was buried under the rubble of a house that was crushed by Russian bombings."
"Another comrade who was 50 meters away told me that they had launched 3 CAB [500-kilo bombs] at Alexander's position. He asked for permission to go see if there were survivors, but they didn't let him," she adds.
According to official data, 788 MIAs were recorded in Krinki, of which 49 have been identified as captives and 11 have been returned as corpses. Bohdanova's figures double those numbers. "Our association has 2,000 families of the missing in Krinki. We have confirmed that there are 41 prisoners, and 21 bodies have been returned," she says.
The Ukrainian offensive against Krinki was one of the most costly in human lives last year and generated enormous controversy in the country due to the scarce strategic value of the objective, a lost village turned into an endless quagmire. The marines themselves considered it a "suicidal" operation, as they told this newspaper.
"No one wants to talk about Krinki. That increases our pain, but we don't want to say it's our mourning," insists the woman, convinced that miracles exist.
Nadiya's anguish is the same shared by tens of thousands of Ukrainian families. For many, the fact that their husbands, sons, or brothers appear on the lists of prisoners - even knowing the precarious conditions they face in Russian prisons - is a relief.
But Dobroserdov himself is honest. "If there is no information about a missing person for a period of time, we assume they are dead, although it cannot be confirmed until we have the body," he points out.
Katya Voropai's brother Ivan, 27, disappeared in July of last year on his first mission on the Járkiv front. They had last spoken on July 24th. His birthday was in a few days.
Katya and her mother contacted all possible witnesses of what happened, and they told her that Ivan's patrol had been attacked by artillery. "They told me that Ivan was evacuating a wounded soldier and a drone appeared. Ivan jumped into a trench but was hit by the drone. He was covered by the earth. It's a mined area, and no one can approach. Ukrainian soldiers have told us that they can see a lot of bodies lying on the ground, but it's impossible to reach there," she narrates.
Katya's routine for many days is visualizing Ukrainian corpses or prisoners on social media pages, hoping to find any clue about Ivan's whereabouts. An unsettling activity that has already caused serious imbalances to her mother.
The Ukrainian woman's broken voice reflects the pain that the absence of news about her brother still causes her. She acknowledges that there are people who believe "in miracles." And she herself feels somewhat "guilty" for "losing hope."