{"id":208401,"date":"2025-06-23T19:09:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T19:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/208401\/"},"modified":"2025-06-23T19:09:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T19:09:15","slug":"drones-mines-and-rotting-corpses-the-difficult-mission-of-bringing-dead-soldiers-home-in-ukraine-international","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/208401\/","title":{"rendered":"Drones, mines and rotting corpses: The difficult mission of bringing dead soldiers home in Ukraine | International"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a hilltop in the Ukrainian province of Donetsk<\/a> lie seven Russian soldiers. Three are charred and four are decomposing. Maggots crawl out of the skull cavities, and flies completely cover their bodies. The smell of decay is overwhelming, but the wind manages to carry it toward the fields that extend from the hill. Oleksii Yukov, a soldier who leads a team of body collectors, is pleased because among the ashes of one of the corpses are fragments of the spinal column, from which DNA can be extracted. Another has a necklace that might help the family identify him.<\/p>\n

Yukov and his exhumation unit, Platsdarm, are a household name in Ukraine. Ukrainian and Russian families regularly contact them on social media to share personal information about their missing loved ones. Tens of thousands of families on both sides live in anguish, not knowing the fate of their relatives lost in combat. Until their body is recovered and identified, their death cannot be certified.<\/p>\n

Platsdarm\u2019s work has special significance this June because Ukraine and Russia agreed in their most recent bilateral meeting in Istanbul to exchange 6,000 corpses from each side<\/a> \u2014 the largest swap of fallen fighters since the war began. Moscow has already transferred the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers, and Kyiv is in the process of doing the same.<\/p>\n

Pat Griffiths, a spokesperson for the International Red Cross in Ukraine, estimates that exchanges of bodies between the two sides have taken place about twice a month over the past two years. As of last May, Ukraine had recovered the remains of more than 8,000 soldiers, according to Defense Ministry data. There are no official figures from Russia.<\/p>\n

\"EquipoRepatriation of bodies of Ukrainian soldiers from Russia, June 15.Security Service of Ukraine HANDOUT (EFE)<\/p>\n

After the Istanbul meeting on June 2, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy<\/a> warned that identifying Ukrainian dead in Russian morgues was crucial to preventing the Kremlin from sending bodies of Russians it wanted to dispose of. Zelenskiy added that this had happened in the past.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko confirmed on Monday that among the 6,000 repatriated bodies, human remains belonging to Russian soldiers had also been found, without providing further details. Klymenko estimates that it will take more than a year of analysis to determine the identities of all the corpses. On Saturday, Zelenskiy announced that 20 of the bodies were of Russian soldiers, and one was of a foreign mercenary.<\/p>\n

Griffiths notes that both sides carry out basic identification before repatriation to determine whether the deceased belonged to one army or the other. More detailed data, such as DNA, are used for identifying their own dead. The role of the Red Cross is crucial as a neutral mediator and observer in the return of bodies. It also contributes to data collection on the deceased and provides the Ukrainian side with refrigerated facilities, DNA testing equipment, forensic supplies, and forensic training.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are all victims of Putin\u201d<\/p>\n

Two of the charred bodies Platsdarm analyzed on June 10 died inside an armored vehicle that burned at over 1,000 degrees Celsius. This occurred in late 2022. Four others died this spring. Yukov\u2019s men are taking note of every detail: where they died, weapons found near the body, dental characteristics, clothing, tattoos, and personal items.<\/p>\n

This work with Russian corpses is essential so that many Ukrainian families can also bury their loved ones, thanks to exchanges like the one set to take place in June. Yukov does the work for this reason, as well as a sense of \u201chumanity\u201d: \u201cThey are all victims of the same person, whether Ukrainian or Russian, Vladimir Putin<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Between 60,000 and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in combat in more than three years of war. Russian deaths are estimated to be close to 250,000. These are figures from the latest independent report on casualties from the U.S. security think tank CSIS.<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of soldiers are missing, according to Ukrainian authorities, meaning their death or whereabouts cannot be confirmed. The war front \u201cis littered with corpses,\u201d explains Coyote, the code name for a veteran soldier of Ukraine\u2019s 25th Airborne Assault Brigade. \u201cThere are so many that sometimes we pile them up to make a parapet; they still wear their bulletproof vests and helmets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ExpertosExperts from the Ukrainian body exhumation group Platsdarm analyze dead Russian soldiers, June 10 in Donetsk.Cristian Segura<\/p>\n

The smell of death is the smell of a decomposing organism, says Coyote. The worst part, he explains, is living with that smell coming from a fallen comrade in the position they\u2019re defending, who cannot be evacuated for days. Today, the war is dominated by drones<\/a> \u2014 every mile of the front is covered by these devices: any troop movement is detected from the air and attacked with bomb drones or artillery. It\u2019s when the sun starts to set, or on days with bad flying conditions for drones, that a unit can rotate and recover their fallen comrade.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many drones that it\u2019s now impossible to recover bodies from the front line. Just trying to evacuate one dead body can cost you three men. It\u2019s best if it\u2019s someone who died next to you, because we can evacuate them at some point.\u201d This is the account of a soldier responsible for the extraction of Ukrainian and Russian dead bodies from the 28th Mechanized Brigade, who prefers not to give his name. This soldier confirms that they don\u2019t extract Russian bodies from the front: \u201cIt\u2019s not because we don\u2019t want to, it\u2019s because we can barely get our own out; we\u2019re already risking too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ground drones<\/p>\n

For Russia, it is now easier to obtain the bodies of fallen Ukrainians. The invader is advancing on almost all fronts of the war, and as combat zones fall under their control, they can safely exhume the bodies. The Ukrainian Armed Forces were able to do the same in 2022, after liberating much of the territory that Russia had captured in the first months of the war.<\/p>\n

Coyote\u2019s company, from the 25th Brigade, agrees that they also do not risk evacuating fallen Russians. \u201cWe don\u2019t have the resources for that and we have to focus on our own,\u201d reports Golf, the codename of a sergeant. His unit relies entirely on ground drones to evacuate the wounded or dead. \u201cIt\u2019s the only way to do it without losing more lives,\u201d says Golf. Another Ukrainian regiment interviewed by EL PA\u00cdS, the 59th Assault Brigade, estimates that 20% of evacuations of wounded and dead are done with ground drones.<\/p>\n

\"UnA soldier of the 25th Ukrainian Airborne Brigade prepares a ground drone, June 12 in Donetsk.Cristian Segura<\/p>\n

These drones are remote-controlled platforms that primarily serve to transport materials<\/a> such as ammunition or food from the second line, two miles away, to the most advanced positions on the front. Drones like the Lince or the Cucaracha return to the rear carrying wounded or dead soldiers. \u201cOn every mission, we have to repair them because they always hit a mine,\u201d explains one of the engineers responsible for these drones in the 25th Brigade. Both armies use aerial drones to drop butterfly mines or other small explosives on frontline trails.<\/p>\n

For Yukov, recovering a person\u2019s body is also a \u201cspiritual\u201d mission: \u201cI am convinced that our souls must continue their journey after death, reunited with their families.\u201d Decades will pass, and bodies will continue to be found, becoming increasingly difficult to identify, until they are forgotten. The Platsdarm team knows this well: from time to time, they discover the remains of World War II combatants. <\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a hilltop in the Ukrainian province of Donetsk lie seven Russian soldiers. Three are charred and four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657,333,76011],"class_list":{"0":"post-208401","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine","11":"tag-vladimir-putin","12":"tag-volodimir-zelenski"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114734259764188288","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}