On Ukraine’s battlefields, this group respects fallen soldiers – no matter which side

Oleksii Yukov ventures into Ukraine’s battle zones in a camouflaged vehicle with a singular mission: to make sure respect is shown to the fallen, regardless of whether they were Russian or Ukrainian.

While the warring forces tear up the bucolic landscape, he and his team, Platsdarm, collect the remains of those killed in combat. Deceased Russians are eventually returned to their nation, while Ukrainians go back to their families for mourning.

“We all are human beings,” says Mr. Yukov. “We do not differentiate between Russians and Ukrainians in the way we treat them. If Russians saw how we treat their dead soldiers, this war would probably end tomorrow.”

It’s fraught, difficult work, but vital for families on both sides seeking closure and a chance to grieve. And along with exchanges of prisoners of war and noncombatants who had been detained amid the conflict, the limited cooperation between Russia and Ukraine shows that the two sides can still find a measure of middle ground, at least on humanitarian issues.

A life’s mission

People missing due to armed conflict tend to afflict societies long after the guns go quiet. Hundreds of thousands of people are still considered missing from the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. That makes the work of Platsdarm so critical. Handling bodies correctly and in a timely manner allows Ukrainian families to find closure and Russians to have a proper starting point for their DNA analyses.

“The work they do ... contribute[s] to preventing soldiers who are missing in action from staying MIA,” says Achille Després, the Kyiv spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross. The international organization supports local efforts in forensic analysis with training and material, and helps operationalize agreement on repatriation between the warring sides.

Mr. Yukov’s passion for skeletal sleuthing started at the age of 13, while trying to decode the hows and whys of war. One spring after much pestering, his brother took him to the forests near Sviatohirsk, to see the remains of Soviet soldiers who were killed during World War II – flashes of bone in a sea of green.

“What humans are we if we allow ourselves to live among unburied souls?” he asked himself. “I decided to make it my life mission to give peace to every dead soul. All I pray for is to have enough time to accomplish this.”

As an adult, he joined a volunteer group that was focused on returning the bodies of soldiers from World War I and World War II. That changed in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and occupied territories in the resource-rich regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and it intensified in 2022 when Russia launched all-out war.

Now Platsdarm, Mr. Yukov’s volunteer team, frequents military sites to collect information that could help identify soldiers’ remains. “By knowing the number of the tank, the location where it was destroyed, families will be able to identify who was inside it,” he says.

Such painstaking puzzle work paves the way for the repatriation of Russian soldiers to their homeland. And Ukraine has received its own troops’ remains from Russia – though not as a quid pro quo, authorities are quick to stress.

“The repatriation process is not an exchange or a swap,” says Petro Yatsenko, a representative at the Ukrainian government’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War. “We are willing to pass these bodies to the other side. And the other side is willing to pass the bodies back to Ukraine. This process occurs regularly, but not as regularly as we would want.”

To date, there have been 65 repatriation rounds from Russia to Ukraine, returning the remains of 2,708 Ukrainians killed since Feb. 24, 2022. A “comparable” number of bodies have been repatriated to Russia.

The complicated math of POW exchanges

But dead soldiers are not the only concern. Recovering POWs and captive noncombatants is also a top priority in Kyiv, leading to quiet discussions with Moscow.

The two countries have conducted 51 exchanges of POWs, leading to the return of 3,135 people to Ukraine, including 147 civilians, according to Ukraine’s official figures. The largest prisoner swap to date delivered 230 people back to Ukraine in January.

“Every POW exchange is unique,” says Mr. Yatsenko. “It is not math. There is no general formula for such prisoner swaps. For example, we exchanged for one Russian politician more than 150 prisoners of war. ... The main principle is this: We ask for women [and] heavily injured people first, and we try to do that every time.”

There are several complicating factors when it comes to POW exchanges with Russia. One, Mr. Yatsenko says, is that Russia tries to exchange Ukrainian civilians for Russian POWs. Kyiv must tread carefully in such cases to avoid creating an incentive for Russians to capture more civilians in the territories they occupy. There are about 6,000 Ukrainian POWs in Russian captivity, and about 1,600 of them are noncombatants, according to the same source.

Russia is particularly reluctant to let go of Ukrainian fighters in the Azov brigade, which has past links to far-right groups, and others who fought fiercely to defend the industrial hub of Mariupol. Billboards and graffiti calling for their release can be spotted across Ukraine. “Of course, Russia says they are fascists and very bad people, so they say it is very difficult to let these people free,” says Mr. Yatsenko.

Talks over the repatriation of remains and POWs occur on separate tracks. When it comes to negotiating the release of POWs, Ukraine has had three interlocutors throughout the course of the conflict. These are the Russian armed forces, Chechens who fight for Russia, and the notorious mercenary group Wagner, which was disbanded last year after its leader directly challenged Kremlin authority.

“We still have cases of people not requested by the Russian side,” among them high-ranking officers and pilots, adds Mr. Yatsenko. “We don’t know why. If we have a Chechen battalion fighter as a result of our activities, it is like jackpot. Chechens are very interested to take their people back to Chechnya. They don’t want them to be taken into captivity.”

A step toward peace?

Whatever progress Ukraine and Russia make on exchanges of POWs or soldiers’ remains, though, such dialogue is easier than finding a political settlement to conflict, says Mr. Després, the International Committee of the Red Cross spokesperson.

A summit is planned in Switzerland in June to brainstorm a way out of the conflict – but without Moscow. “Should Russia want to have peace, they can just move their troops back to their territory,” says Mr. Yatsenko.

Still, Mr. Després says, the capacity to cooperate on the humanitarian issues helps build trust between the enemy sides. The fact that conversations are taking on several issues and are among multiple actors across the divide is a rare positive sign amid the many negatives of war.

“Having a dialogue is better than having no dialogue,” points out Mr. Després. “When two enemy sides speak on humanitarian issues, it can be a step to building trust and towards eventual peace.”

Reporting for this story was supported by Oleksandr Naselenko.