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