KHARKIV, Ukraine – They were in white and black bags at 20 degrees Celsius, but the stench persisted. Filled with the bodies of 62 Russian soldiers, the bags were secretly loaded in a refrigerated carriage location on the outskirts of Ukraine’s second largest city. An elderly train worker nimbly turned a hatch-like door to reveal bloody bags as the scent wafted through the damp air.
“We are collecting these bodies for hygiene reasons, because the dogs ate them,” said one Ukrainian soldier, pointing to his sign, Summer said. “We will eventually return them to their loved ones.”
Summer said many of the bodies lay in the open for a month or so before his unit found them. His team of two worked to identify soldiers by their faces, tattoos, and belongings. They also took DNA swabs from each corpse to determine if there were any potential war crimes suspects among them.
In the shadow of the dark car, some traces of people, of the soldiers who had brought the Russian war to Ukraine, could be seen. A pair of muddy boots peeked out from a bag. In the corner, the collar of the camouflage jacket was visible through an opening, but the face was not visible.
Summer’s colleagues, who declined to use even the first abbreviation because of the sensitivity of the subject, said they were the only two people in their unit tasked with finding and preserving the remains of Summer. enemy. He said the recognition is about 50% of the time, while in other cases the corpse is too bad. Most of the bodies were found in villages around Kharkiv.
“This is the best work in the world,” he said of the grim satisfaction of collecting an invader’s corpse.
In recent weeks, the Ukrainian army has succeeded counter-attack Russian forcespush them further away from Kharkiv and give the city a sense of peace, at least until shelling resumes again on Wednesday.
As the Russians retreated, some people were left behind, and as the inhabitants of Kharkiv began to hesitantly return to the villages that were in the fire zone, some found bodies in their homes or by accident. find them elsewhere.
The train attendants slept in the carriage next to the refrigerated carriage, guarding the corpses. Colleagues have taken up similar assignments in other cities, among them Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro, where other refrigerated wagons contain hundreds of bodies.
Ukrainian authorities have complained that the Kremlin has been reluctant to engage on the topic of repatriation of the dead.
Ukraine says 30,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the invasion began on 24 February; Those numbers cannot be independently verified and Russia rarely issues a casualty toll. Last week, a British intelligence assessment estimated Russian losses at half that figure. Western intelligence agencies estimate that thousands more Russians are missing or are being held.
Russia has not released casualty figures since late March, when it said 1,351 soldiers were dead and 3,825 wounded. Estimates based on public evidence suggest that more than 400 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded in an incident that happened earlier this month in northeastern Ukraine.
Last week, for the first time since the Russian invasion, President Vladimir V. Putin visited a military hospital in Moscow to visit wounded soldiers. Donning a white lab coat, he calls everyone serving in Ukraine “heroes”. Mr. Putin also announced an increase in compensation for those who served there, a sign that he may be trying to assuage public discontent over the casualties. Russia also abolished the age limit for concluding military service contracts.
Ukraine has not yet shared information on its military casualties, but President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week in Davos that up to 100 servicemen could die every day in the brutal fighting in the eastern Donbas.
Ukraine’s allies are also reluctant to comment on the casualties suffered by the Ukrainian military, but US intelligence agencies estimated in mid-April that between 5,500 and 11,000 soldiers were killed and more than 18,000 wounded. love.
One of the soldiers handling Russian corpses in Kharkiv said he hopes Ukraine’s decision to protect Russia’s war dead can improve his chances of winning his own back from the side. behind enemy lines.
“For me, the most important thing is that we get the boys’ bodies back to their families,” he said. So we treat these bodies with respect.”
