Ukraine's special military units search for fallen soldiers
Special Ukrainian military units are searching for the bodies of fallen Ukrainian and Russian soldiers so that their families can bury them and have a place to mourn.
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00:00 Oghdan Hipix was killed two years ago.
00:06 His mother Victoria still remembers the afternoon when a voice on the phone told her that her
00:10 son had died in combat, fighting for Ukraine.
00:18 It was all just so strange, such a strange day.
00:23 I took a few sedatives and in the evening I just fell asleep.
00:27 I lay down and I slept through the night.
00:31 It's the day after that's truly awful.
00:34 You wake up and you don't want to admit it's true.
00:38 You think to yourself, I must have dreamt it.
00:41 This is all just a terrible dream.
00:45 It took more than a year before Victoria Hipix was able to bury her son here, in his hometown
00:50 of Kharkiv.
00:52 It's an important place for her to be able to grieve.
00:55 Her younger son Yaroslav was also killed at the front, but his remains have not been found.
01:02 I so hope that he will still be found.
01:04 At Bogdan's burial we tried to keep a plot free next to him.
01:09 It would be nice if they were both buried here.
01:12 They were always so close.
01:16 Three hours from Kharkiv, close to the front, Volodymyr and his team spend their days searching
01:21 for fallen soldiers.
01:23 Their unit specialises in recovering the dead so that their relatives can pay their last
01:27 respects.
01:28 It's a dangerous job, as the former battlefields are often scattered with mines.
01:33 Watch out, explosion!
01:39 The Russians often leave behind surprises like that.
01:42 They're even under dead bodies.
01:47 Estimates put the death toll at well over 100,000, but the figures cannot be verified.
01:52 Many are still lying somewhere in the fields of eastern Ukraine.
01:56 It doesn't take long before Volodymyr's team finds something.
02:06 My experience tells me these are not human bones.
02:09 The farmers here had a lot of chickens, cows and pigs on their farms.
02:14 When they fled, they had to leave them behind.
02:19 A little further south, closer to the combat zone, another team lays out what they brought
02:24 back from a search operation.
02:26 They found ten corpses in a forested area.
02:29 Now they have to identify the bodies, most of which are severely disfigured.
02:39 We have a notebook with some phone numbers in it.
02:43 This is probably the contact information for his daughter.
02:46 This should make it easier to confirm his identity.
02:54 Even the smallest physical remains can be enough to identify Ukrainian soldiers.
02:59 They're matched to a database of DNA samples.
03:10 We've found tiny pieces of fingers, teeth and bone fragments in the faeces of animals.
03:16 If there's even a chance to identify a person, we leave no stone unturned.
03:21 Every soldier should be brought back to their families.
03:26 Oleksii says that some of the deceased here are probably Russians.
03:30 The team also tries identifying the bodies to the best of their ability.
03:36 They kill us, but we remain human.
03:38 Every person should be buried with dignity.
03:45 After hours of searching, Volodymyr and his team have come across more bones in a remote
03:50 field.
03:52 Based on the location, Volodymyr concludes that these are also Russian bodies.
03:57 He hopes their remains can be handed over later during an exchange of fallen soldiers.
04:03 We keep them safe.
04:10 At some point a special unit will take care of handing over the bodies.
04:16 Victoria Hipiks is hoping for such a handover.
04:20 Her youngest son was probably killed in Mariupol, on Russian occupied territory.
04:25 Only an exchange of remains would allow her to bury him.
04:32 We need to seize any opportunity, exchange the dead or just give back remains without
04:37 getting anything in return.
04:40 It's important for every mother to be able to mourn at a grave.
04:47 But despite all the efforts of search teams, the largest burial site of Ukrainian soldiers
04:52 is likely not here in the cemetery, but in the vast fields of eastern Ukraine.
04:57 [BLANK_AUDIO]