“Defender of Ukraine temporarily unidentified & rdquor ;. It says that on a handwritten sign, and around it there are no flowers, photographs or offerings. Just a cross made with two wooden sticks, the vertical one planted in the ground, under a mound of turned earth. A little further on you can hear the cries of some families who have come to say goodbye to their relatives and friends, also dead from the war. But no one is in front of the cartel’s grave. Nobody knows whose he is.
In normal times at the Kransnopiliya cemetery in the city of Dnipro, scenes like this would not be seen. Or the one with two rows of freshly dug graves waiting for coffins of ukrainian soldiers. However, here the war in Ukraine is this brutal reality. That of a conflict that is claiming hundreds of lives, in ways so cruel that even establishing the identity of those who have passed away can be a challenge.
Mikhail Lysenko has been working for seven years as deputy mayor of Dnipro, the city in eastern Ukraine that borders three fronts. He is responsible for transport and feasibility. But he also receives information every day about the morgues where the corpses of the dead soldiers on the battlefields in the nearby regions of Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Lugansk, Kharkiv, and who are brought to the morgues of the city. He explains that it is not an easy task because, in some cases, the bodies are so decomposed that their identification is difficult.
DNA tests
“In some cases, we have been able to identify them by some trace of shoe, or thanks to their military uniforms & rdquor ;, account. “We also do DNA tests, which are very expensive, and we collaborate with a laboratory in Lisbon (Portugal) that is helping us & rdquor ;, she says. “When families ask us we compare their DNA to determine where the soldier is from and who his relatives are & rdquor ;, he adds.
In one of the three big morgues of Dnipro in which the bodies are taken, to which we can access with Lysenko and whose exact location we are asked not to divulge, the reason for this situation is understood. Several inert bodies accumulate in every corner, while a handful of doctors and nurses busily do their thing with others, also lifeless, in an urgent job that seems endless.
The toilets keep them placed in this place inside the main building of the structure -which is where the vans arrive with which they are transported-, when there are others who are in black bags located inside a refrigerated truck installed outside, a few meters away.
These are the ones that, as Lysenko has already said in various interviews —for example, to the American television network CNN— and he repeats to us, are believed to be from Russian soldiers, also unidentified and killed in combat. “We have collected them in various eastern regions and we would like the Russian authorities to take charge and reclaim them. But it hasn’t happened yet. I never would have imagined it & rdquor ;, explains that, if no conclusion is reached, they will probably be buried in Ukraine and that their intention is not to make families suffer.
family suffering
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Precisely the suffering of the families is seen in Mykhailo, a driver from Kharkov, when he approaches to ask about the whereabouts of his wife’s brother, who He was fighting in the area on the Ukrainian side. They haven’t heard from him for days, and he wants to know what he has to do to start the procedures for the delivery of the DNA.
You are not alone in suffering from a lack of tangible information about the fate of your loved ones. Sasha, who is originally from Dnipro, has stopped hearing from his father, a volunteer fighter, in the last week. The worst outcome is what he fears, and that is because in a Telegram group of pro-Russians they spread the images of his father’s identity documents, according to him. “I have been told that most probably at 90% is that he is dead. The problem is that I feel in limbo, I don’t know where he is, I haven’t told my little brother, and now, I guess, all the paperwork begins & rdquor ;, says the young man.