#eastern #Ukraine #volunteers #recovering #bodies #war #dead
Oleksiy Yukov returns to his white refrigerated truck with a red cross on the side, ending another hard day of collecting bodies from the front lines in eastern Ukraine.
The vehicle, parked in the city of Sloviansk, bears the number 200 next to the symbol – a reference to a military code used in Soviet times for the repatriation of soldiers’ remains.
“I have a duty to get these bodies. After all, the soldiers are dying for us,” says 36-year-old Yukov, who is wearing a T-shirt with a black tulip, the emblem of the organization with the same name, for which he works.
The NGO Black Tulip was founded in the early 2010s to find and recover the remains of soldiers killed during both world wars.
But now the group is searching for victims of a contemporary war that began in 2014 with a pro-Russian uprising in eastern Ukraine and engulfed the entire country after Moscow invaded on February 24.
Every day, Yukov and two other volunteers traverse the eastern region of Donbass, searching fields, roads and areas near the front lines for the bodies of soldiers and civilians killed in the war.
– ‘Merciless War’ –
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in early June that between 60 and 100 soldiers die every day on Ukraine’s eastern front, the scene of the heaviest fighting.
Yukov estimates that he has transported at least 300 bodies since the war began, most of whom were transferred to morgues in Dnipro, a city in central Ukraine.
Among them were the remains of Russian soldiers.
“Death doesn’t matter. All bodies should be treated with respect,” Yukov told AFP.
The bodies of the enemy soldiers are handed over to the Ukrainian army, which is in charge of exchanges with the Russian armed forces.
In 2014, Black Tulip volunteers were sometimes given permission to retrieve the remains of soldiers from separatist-controlled areas in eastern Ukraine, even when their safety was far from guaranteed.
But now, they said, the red cross on their truck has made it a target for Russian forces, which have seized control of large parts of Donbas territory.
“2014 was tough. But it’s nothing compared to what’s happening today. It’s become a merciless war, a crazy war. Nobody controls anything anymore,” Yukov said, suddenly burying his face in his hands.
“I have images that come to me,” he whispered, referring to visions of mutilated bodies and dogs devouring the corpses that haunt him after work.
He will also forever remember the Kramatorsk train station tragedy in April, when a Russian missile attack killed over 50 people who fled to safety.
Black Tulip volunteers worked for two days to collect body parts, Yukov said.
– ‘Important Mission’ –
“Black Tulip is carrying out a very important mission that few could fulfill mentally or physically,” said Dmytro Kravchenko, an official at Sloviansk City Hall.
“In addition to the bodies, the volunteers are also collecting evidence of the presence of foreign troops. It’s important to the story,” he added.
Black Tulip relies on donations, including significant ones from a Ukrainian church in the United States.
For Yukov, finding missing soldiers was an interest from an early age.
“When I was 11, we were walking in the woods with my brother and we came across a mass grave that I later found out was from World War II,” he said.
Yukov, a former president of the region’s Thai boxing federation, reports to neither the army nor the Ukrainian authorities.
He is deeply invested in the mission. He works tirelessly and has not seen his wife and daughter, who are seeking refuge in Dnipro, for over a month.
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