The war in Ukraine: dangers, pain and surprise in the grim task of recovering the bodies of the fallen

Dressed with fatigue and trying to ignore the rumble of artillery echoing in the background, the men walk and inspect the fields and forests of Donetsk.

The city in eastern Ukraine has been the epicenter of some of the bloodiest fighting since the Russian invasion began in February 2022, and the possibility of being caught in the middle of a firefight is a constant fear.

There are about 100 volunteers of the Black Tulip Humanitarian Organization who, equipped with gloves, shovels and brushes, perhaps perform one of the tasks more seedy imaginable in the horror of a war: dig up the bodies of soldiers buried at the front, identify them and return them to their relatives.

“Every time we dig up one of our boys, I think we are doing something good. Their parents are waiting for him at home,” explains Artur Simeiko, one of the volunteers, in a video about his work, what he feels when they dig up a Ukrainian soldiers. “There they can be buried properlyaccording to the tradition of the corresponding rite, Christian or otherwise”.

“They shouldn’t be lying in a forest, or a field, or on the road”, complete.

The dangers

Added to the logical psychological difficulties of their work are the potential dangers they may encounter. Some bodies are dug up traces of explosive attached to themand in some cases it is even discovered that they have been placed booby traps by burying themwhich requires you to work with utmost care to disable them.

While Tulipán Negro’s work centers on Ukrainian soldiers, they too seek return the bodies of Russian soldiers that they discover in their excavations. In those cases, what they usually do is try to do an exchange with Russian forces by corps of Ukrainians taken in retreat.

The pain of informing families

One of the most difficult tasks is informing families that they have recovered the body of a loved one.

The volunteers received psychological education from the Red Cross, and have learned to talk to relatives and to give them the news that it is the end of all hope. Contact with family members often begins from the moment the body is unearthed and continues long after the return is complete and burial.

For many of the volunteers, work has become a sort of obligation.

“To those who gave their lives for us. They did their job. They stood up for us to the best of their ability. When they die, our job is to help them get home. Unfortunately only as dead, but they still have to go home,” Alexei Yukov, the group’s communications officer, told German Taz newspaper.

A changing job

Tulipán Negro’s work began as an assignment with more scientific and archaeological purposes. In the early 2000s, Ukrainian businessman Yaroslav Zhilkin created the organization to dig up soldiers buried in Donetsk during World War II, during what was 22-month occupation of the German army in the area.

Assignments drastically changed with the beginning of the war of Donbas, in 2014, the conflict between Russian separatist groups and the Ukrainian government which can be considered the germ of the ongoing war.

Since searching for bones of bodies that died 60 years ago, volunteers have had to go look for recent corpses, with current uniforms and weapons, many of which are still recognizable by facial features.

The Russian invasion that began in February 2022 has brought with it a worsening of the conditions that began in 2014. There is not only more fighting, with more modern and powerful weapons, but there are even more dead. The losses, on both sides, are significantly higher than those seen 9 years ago.

The key difference, however, is the total lack of communication between the two parties. Although there was hostility from Russian troops in 2014, it was still possible to reach agreements to advance into enemy territory and fulfill the task of recovering the bodies. In 2022 this option no longer exists.

When it comes to knowing where to look for mass graves or makeshift cemeteries, the volunteers work together with specialists from the Emergency Situations Service of Ukraine, as well as the police and army.

When they arrive at a place, first they talk to the local civilians, which tell the details of the fighting that took place there. Finally, they go around the area with the aim of detecting the presence of possible explosives and deactivating them before proceeding to search for the bodies.

World War II remains

Even amid the sea of ​​bodies they are currently uncovering (the organization does not disclose how many they rescued during the ongoing conflict), volunteers continue to find remains of fallen soldiers in WWIIas well as grenades and weapons of the era.

“We found identifying marks on each side. The Germans had coins and army clothing, while the Soviets they have distinctive stars and some documents”, specifies the volunteer Oleksii Iukov.

The unearthed bones are placed in bags to be transported together with the bodies of the soldiers who fell in the ongoing conflict, who begin the journey to see if they can identify them.

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