LVIV, Ukraine — As the bodies of fallen soldiers slowly fill a hillside at a military cemetery in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, old unmarked graves of those killed in Former wars are being unearthed to clear the way for the seemingly endless stream of dead since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
On Monday afternoon, half a dozen gravediggers rested in the shade, awaiting the latest coffin they would bury at Lychakiv Cemetery. Smoking cigarettes and shading them from the sun, they lament the devastation Russia has caused. They say they are bracing for more deaths as fighting deepens in the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
On a steep hillside, two dead men hundreds of miles apart were buried side by side. Bohdan Didukh, 34, was killed by a landmine last week on the front lines of the Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine, where the first phases of the Ukrainian counter-offensive have begun. Three days later, Oleh Didukh, 52, died of a heart attack while serving in an air defense unit in a relatively safe area in the west of the country.
On Monday, they were honored side by side at a joint funeral in Lviv. Both of their families were deeply saddened when the earth shoveled on top of the two coffins fell with a series of thuds. The men, who had the same last name but had never known each other in their lives, were united to the death to serve their country.
One of the harsh realities of Russia’s war in Ukraine is that even in a city far from hostilities, such as Lviv, soldiers killed on the front lines during the 15-month conflict have been return to their homeland, sometimes in groups, and rest at the same time. It is considered an effective way to get through a lot of funerals when the dead keep coming.
At the funeral of the two men at a Greek Catholic church in central Lviv, incense filled the air, the priest said he assumed the two were father and son because of their names and ages. Although their families were not related, he said, they shared the pain together.
Funerals for fallen soldiers have become a grim routine in Lviv. After the church service, the coffins were loaded onto trucks and transported to the central square, where a single trumpeter played. After that, the group went to the cemetery.
Along the way to the cemetery, people stop to pay their respects. A young girl stood next to her father, holding a small brown shopping bag, looking straight ahead as the coffins passed. Some bystanders fell to their knees.
At the cemetery, Olena Didukh, the wife of Bohdan Didukh, fainted momentarily from grief and the afternoon sun. Her sister held her steady, wrapping her arms around her back.
Kateryna Havrylenko, 50, who maintains the city’s graves, loads dirt in a wheelbarrow. She said there are funerals here almost every day.
“With the counterattack, many young men and women will be killed,” she said. “Words cannot describe how difficult it is. Very, very difficult. Even though I’m a stranger, I’m someone’s child, just like I have a child.”
Atop the hillside, city officials have begun excavating the unmarked graves of long-buried World War I soldiers, young men who died at the turn of the century. centuries ago to make room for those who fell in this war.
At the start of the war with Russia last year, there was only a small group of freshly dug graves on the hillside in part of the cemetery. Now, nearly 500 soldiers have been buried here in plots that fill half a hillside, she said, and there will be more.
“It’s hard to think – last summer, there were very few. And now there are many.” With a distant look, she added: “And until the war is over, how many more will be left?”
Daria Mitiuk contributed reporting.
