Living soldiers save dead soldiers on the Ukrainian front

Special Envoy to KievIn a war, death enters inertia mode.

People knelt in downtown Kiev on Monday. Pedestrians knelt on the ground in a sign of respect. Drivers stopped their cars, got out, and bowed to death. In front of it, a hearse entered the Monastery of Sant Miquel. A Ukrainian soldier was about to be buried. Those kneeling didn't recognize the dead soldier. The death of each man on his forehead is considered his own. The coffin, with military honors, entered the church: it disappeared from the street, from life. Pedestrians stood up and continued walking. Drivers returned to their cars and continued driving. Ukraine's cemeteries are filled with corpses in uniform. The fronts of Ukraine are full of death.

No one knows how many soldiers have died in this war. The most widely accepted estimates put the number of Ukrainian corpses at 100,000. 250,000 RussiansIf we add the wounded, Russian casualties exceed one million, and Ukrainian casualties approach 400,000. If we add the missing—tens of thousands of soldiers on each side—the war calculator explodes because the resulting figure is unbearable. And if we put down the calculator, we'll understand that each number represents a dead man of living age.

"Pain, pain. I only feel pain now, always pain," says a woman with a powerful name: Romashka. Her work on the Ukrainian front is also powerful: she has spent three years recovering the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers killed in combat. Without a body, there is no way to honor the fallen hero. Without a body, the families cannot come to terms with their death. Before sending the coffin, she dignifies the soldiers' bodies to minimize the trauma of those who will receive it. You have seen scenes that explain an entire war: A soldier lives carrying in his arms the body of his brother, also a soldier, dead. Living soldiers also save dead soldiers.

—How do you dignify a corpse, Romashka?

—By taking care of it. After documenting everything, my work begins: I put the body on a stretcher, clean it of blood, dirt, remains, smells… I don’t care in what condition the corpse arrives, I always send them clean to the families. Clean bodies, because They are angels. Angels who have given their lives for our freedom. They all deserve to be home.

—Do you put their uniforms back on them?

—If the body isn’t too damaged, yes. If it’s already impossible to dress them, I clean the uniform, fold it, and place it on top of the soldier’s remains. The boots too. The uniform is important: they must return home as heroes.

—What do you feel when you’re alone with the corpse?

—Before I start washing them, I kneel before it, I pay homage to them. Then I look at them and feel their pain. Not just because of death, because death is the end of pain. But usually these children have gone through pain, fear, before dying.

—Do you have any contact with the soldiers' families?

—I've received an outpouring of gratitude. It's vital for the families to recover the bodies, even if it's just a piece of what was their body.

On Ukrainian trains, people get up from their seats every day at nine in the morning to honor those who fell in battle. They stand for a minute and then sit back down. These are automatic movements, the inertia of war.

"How can I not think about my death?"

At soldiers' funerals, living soldiers attend to bid farewell to the dead.It's a sad scene. When the ceremony is over, they return to their positions. It's hard not to ask a sad question: which of them will be next?

Private Maksim refuses to attend his comrades' funerals: "I can't, I can't. I know that if I go, I could psychologically explode." Private Maksim is 47 years old and has been fighting on the front lines since the beginning of the invasion. Previously, Private Maksim worked in construction; now he's an infantryman somewhere on the southern flank. Private Maksim has begun to stutter because of the war. He speaks on the phone from his positions.

—Do you think about your death?

—How could I not think about it? I think about it constantly. I have post-traumatic stress disorder, and that makes it unbearable.

—How does post-traumatic stress manifest itself in you?

—In negativity, depression, inability to make decisions, constant doubts, stuttering, headaches, panic attacks... My symptoms get worse when I talk and remember things.

—What things?

—So many of my comrades have died... I was a guerrilla commander. You feel an inexplicable pain when children die, and you wonder if you could have saved them.

—I feel bad for having made you talk about it.

—Nothing happens, the world should know the pain of our people and our country.

"Come defend us from the orcs": Posters displayed across the country encourage Ukrainian men to enlist in the army. These posters make war seem fun, exciting, epic. War also involves marketing, and soldiers on the front lines hire professional photographers to take photos. They then post the images on social media and include links where you can send money to their brigades.

"Many people also use photos to flirt," a Kiev photographer who has traveled to the Donbas more than once to take military portraits tells me. "But it's not the best idea to flirt with a soldier: if you take one match on Tinder with them, you'll most likely have to wait months for the first date." War, in 2025, also means spending hours on Tinder, Telegram, Instagram, and TikTok trying to arrange a date.

Soldiers sometimes make an appointment with God too. On Monday, an official act of the president Zelensky in Kiev was full of military priestsThey said they live with the troops on the front lines every day: every army unit has its priest, its messenger from God. Father Ivan is a priest in the 8th Independent Mountain Assault Battalion: "We, above all, dedicate ourselves to spiritual guidance of the soldiers, to listening to their thoughts."

- And what do the soldiers think?

- They wonder why They have had to fight in this war, why his friend died, why he survived...

- And what does he tell them?

- I do everything I can to keep them from losing faith. Faith in victory and that one day all of this will end.

- The soldiers prayWhat do they ask for the most?

- Everyone wants to go home. They've been on their foreheads for a long time, without their families… but they know they can't go back now, because if they leave, the enemy will go to their house, to their families, and will do what we do. see in Butxa, Irpín and many other towns that the invaders occupied.

The soldiers who fight want to return home. The soldiers who fight deny the Ukrainian men who don't leave home for avoid being recruitedA man, who prefers to remain anonymous, told me yesterday that other Ukrainian men of fighting age pay doctors money to fake disabling injuries. The most common request to the doctor is to have a wound on your knee to claim you've just had cruciate ligament surgery.

Many soldiers will die and never return home. These days, there have been demonstrations on Maidan Square by the families of soldiers who disappeared on the battlefield months, or years, ago. The families want to think they are alive. The experience of war makes one think they are dead.

These days, while searching for fresh corpses in the trenches of Ukraine in 2025, the bones of World War II soldiers have been found. At first glance, it will be impossible to distinguish which side they were fighting for.