Ukraine buries its unknown soldiers with just a number and a cross
A brother and sister walk between the crosses at a military cemetery in Kyiv, holding a bunch of carnations. Each cross in that section reads: “unknown defender of Ukraine,” with an ID number below and a note that identification continues.
Yet there is one grave that stands out. Beneath the inscription is an attached photo showing Ihor Yalynych, a soldier last seen alive in 2022 in the Kharkiv region. After four years of searching, Stanislav and Oleksandra Yalynych found their father.
Identification of the dead is a reckoning that will stretch on for years, among the longest-lasting wounds of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Some graves may remain nameless forever, with the families left to wait.
For most of the war, there was nowhere to bury the unidentified dead. The bodies lay in refrigerated storage while the national military cemetery was still being built. Even before the cemetery was completed in January, the first group of the unknown soldiers were laid to rest in August. More than 300 now lie beneath numbered crosses, with more graves being dug.
“I was a daddy’s girl, and I took the loss very hard,” said Oleksandra Yalynych, 21. “All these four years, all I wanted was to come and sit with him, to talk. … Now I’m glad we found him. Now I have somewhere to go.”
Ihor Yalynych was killed in April 2022 in eastern Ukraine. He had served in the military since 2015, the year after armed conflict began in eastern Ukraine and Russia illegally annexed Crimea.
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, he was in a brigade stationed in eastern Ukraine. He returned safely from his first mission and sent photos to his son, but he never returned from the second.
After weeks of silence, Stanislav posted on social media that his father was missing. An acquaintance had seen a photo on a Russian Telegram channel — nine soldiers in Ukrainian uniform, shot and lying in a row — and recognized Ihor Yalynych among them. When Stanislav saw it, he knew that his father was among them.
Ukraine’s National Police in the Kharkiv region confirmed to AP that an investigation is underway into the deaths of a group of Ukrainian servicemen whose bodies were found in the region in April 2022, and into their identification.
Ihor’s body lay in the occupied part of the region but was only recovered after the area was liberated in September 2022. The family had to navigate layers of bureaucracy, including DNA testing, before they could reclaim his remains, a process that took four years.
“It could have been faster if the police hadn’t lost the case,” Stanislav said. According to him, the file was sent to the police of Mykolaiv region, where his father was from, and sat unprocessed for more than two years.
In response to a written request from AP, Mykolaiv police did not address the family’s account of a lost file or a delay, but said only that no one had lodged criminal proceedings over Ihor’s identification.
Because the file was missing, Stanislav was only permitted to give a DNA sample for comparison about six months ago. The match followed two months later.
At a Ukrainian military funeral, the flag that covers the coffin is folded and handed to the family. With no one to receive the flag of an unknown soldier, the state stands in, accepting each flag and holding it until the soldier can be identified, Veterans Affairs Minister Natalia Kalmykova said.
