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‘The person is gone, but their watch is still counting time’ How Ukraine finds, identifies, and returns the dead in the midst of Russia’s war

Source: Kit

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, tens of thousands of people have died on both sides. At least three times more Russian soldiers have already been killed in Ukraine than in the entire Soviet–Afghan War, which lasted 10 years. International humanitarian protocols dictate that the remains of the dead be returned to their families. However, despite huge losses, reports on official exchanges often speak of only hundreds of bodies, leaving thousands of people unaccounted for. Russia’s brutal invasion is plowing through densely populated areas, leaving behind immense casualties. In dangerous conditions and with an overwhelming number of dead, bodies are often temporarily buried under a thin layer of earth. Ukrainian law calls for their exhumation, autopsy, identification, and permanent reburial or repatriation. This daunting work falls to special police units, volunteer organizations, and international humanitarian workers. The independent newsletter Kit published the story of how they go about this work in the face of an ongoing war and what is done with the bodies of Russian soldiers found on Ukrainian soil. Meduza is publishing an abridged English-language version of that article.

This article was written by a Russian journalist who chose to remain anonymous for safety reasons. The author has long been involved in battlefield archeology and has worked with groups currently searching for deceased military personnel in Ukraine.

An unimaginable toll

As Ukraine grapples with the devastating impacts of an ongoing war, accurately tallying the number of dead becomes a near-impossible task. Both combatants and civilians have paid a dear price, though the full extent remains shrouded in ambiguity and obfuscation. Both sides conceal their casualties, and civilian deaths are hard to estimate while cities and villages are still under fire and/or Russian occupation. Still, a semblance of the scale of loss is slowly emerging.

According to open-source data collated by BBC News Russian, Mediazona, and a team of volunteers, Russian military fatalities stood at around 35,780 as of November 3, 2023, excluding casualties from the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DNR and LNR). However, this figure is almost certainly a significant underestimate, as not all military funerals are public. Having cross-referenced these names with inheritance data, Meduza and Mediazona estimated the real number to have already been close to 47,000 as of last May. Adding in an approximate 20,000 from the DNR and LNR, the military death toll on the pro-Russian side may well exceed 70,000. U.S. military intelligence places it even higher, at a staggering 120,000.

The situation is no less complex on the Ukrainian side. Official statements last made in December 2022 reported 13,000 military deaths, but this is likely an undercount. Independent assessments vary wildly, with figures ranging from 17,500 to as high as 70,000.

Beyond the military losses, civilians have suffered immensely. The U.N. has documented over 9,500 civilian deaths, including 545 children. However, this number only represents confirmed deaths, leaving many people unaccounted for. Ukrainian authorities list an additional 24,000 as missing. Yuriy Belousov, who heads the war crimes investigation department at the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office, believes the civilian death toll could exceed 100,000. It is his office that is charged with the daunting task of exhuming and identifying Ukraine’s dead and returning their bodies to their loved ones.

The search

“The thing that really gets to you is the watches. More often than not, the hand ends up being higher than the body, so you find it first. And there, on the wrist, is a watch. You look at it — and it’s still ticking. It sends a shiver down your spine. The person is gone, but their watch is still counting time for them,” says a member of Black Tulip, a volunteer organization that has been involved in searching for, exhuming, and identifying the war dead in Ukraine since 2014.

Under the Geneva Convention, the controlling party in a given area is responsible for protecting the dignity of the deceased: identifying the bodies, if possible, and providing a proper burial or repatriating the remains, if requested. Relatives and relevant officials must also be given access to the burial site. Ukrainian law requires that all unofficial graves be exhumed and the remains properly reinterred. This isn’t just about identification — it’s a public health issue. Temporary graves are shallow, vulnerable to disturbance by animals, and pose the risk of contaminating groundwater.

The task of finding and exhuming these graves in Ukraine falls to the police, supported by volunteers from Black Tulip and international humanitarian workers, including teams from the International Red Cross. The bodies are then taken to the morgue for autopsy and forensic examination, which is overseen by the prosecutor’s office. This is dangerous, meticulous work, often conducted under the threat of rocket fire and drone sightings. The bodies themselves may be booby-trapped or lying next to unexploded ordnance and tripwire mines. But it serves a crucial purpose: ensuring dignity in death for the victims of the conflict and helping to piece together evidence documenting war crimes.

Since the onset of the full-scale war, Ukraine’s forensic infrastructure has been struggling to handle the increased workload. Rapid shifts in the front line only make things worse, as retreating forces often don’t have time to retrieve the dead and critically wounded, and some military personnel, such as scouts or those caught in artillery shelling, are never found. In the first months of the full-scale invasion, there were numerous photos on social networks and in the media showing bodies abandoned in fields — the grim aftermath as Russian troops pulled back.

Temporary burials by relatives or acquaintances are comparatively easier to find, but often the dead are buried by strangers. Even if a makeshift grave was marked, improvised crosses are frequently destroyed by explosions or blown away in storms, and plaques are eroded by the weather. Bodies left in trenches are even harder to find, as the earth slowly covers them up.

To locate the dead, search groups survey the terrain for telltale signs of burial, such as ground subsidence, fresh pits, and clearings, and talk to local residents. Dogs help comb through rubble of bombed residential buildings, and drones and satellite images are increasingly being used for search purposes, especially for inaccessible areas along the front line. Operators record the exact coordinates of bodies and pass this information on to the police and, when the territory is liberated, specialists go to the sites. It was satellite imagery that helped locate a mass grave in Izyum that appeared during Russian occupation.

Workers use an old but proven technique to check for bodies: probing with thin metal rods that easily penetrate the ground. If they hit something, the expert taps, listening for the distinctive sound of bone. When remains are found, they’re exhumed and all details, from clothing to dental work, are meticulously documented to help with the identification process.

Black Tulip volunteers play a vital role in the search process. They have vast experience in such tasks: since the early 2000s, members have searched for, exhumed, and identified the bodies of World War II soldiers in Poland and Ukraine. In 2014, Black Tulip was the only Ukrainian search group allowed by the self-proclaimed DNR and LNR authorities to cross the front line and retrieve the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers. From 2014 to 2018, they brought home the bodies of over 800 servicemen.

Currently, Black Tulip has around 100 volunteers. Since the onset of the full-scale invasion, they’ve exhumed over 300 bodies. “We’re volunteers, not soldiers, so it’s less risky for locals to inform us about the bodies,” says one of the members. He adds that the organization knows of dozens of unexamined mass graves in occupied territories.

International protocols recommend ground teams work in two-week rotations and receive psychological support and rest between deployments. However, in war conditions, this is hardly feasible. The work is grueling, lasting as long as there is daylight, and emotionally taxing. One Ukrainian police officer described the impact: “Sooner or later, the weight of what you’ve seen takes its toll. After all, you’re finding people, not mere objects. Some stories are impossible to forget, and there are quite a few of them. But there’s hardly anyone to talk to about it, and I don’t really want to.”

Identification

To identify the bodies, experts look for dental work, fractures, signs of past operations, tattoos, moles, or anything other unique detail that might set the person apart or help someone recognize them. They use DNA analysis and fingerprinting, as well as facial recognition and reconstruction software. If the person has a photo ID or military tag, this can simplify the process. But in wartime, soldiers often strip bodies of any identifying items to obscure their unit’s affiliation.

Even if the person had documents on them when they died, this isn’t enough for an official identification — a relative has to recognize and claim the body. Sometimes, this is impossible. Family members may have left and be unable to return, or the entire family may have been killed together. If bodies remain unidentified and unclaimed, they’re buried in designated sections of city cemeteries.

DNA is the most reliable way to confirm someone’s identity, whether through comparison with official records or with samples given by relatives. Ukraine’s DNA database has become one of the largest in the world, with over 45,000 new records in just the first six months of the full-scale war.

Bodies aren’t exhumed just for identification; it’s important to find the cause of death. The nature of a person’s injuries and items found in their bodies (such as bullets or shell fragments) can become evidence in war crime cases. For example, the bound hands of civilians shot and dumped in hasty graves near Izyum show that these people were executed.

Once bodies are exhumed, they’re taken to the morgue. Forensic teams have to work amidst power outages and air raid alerts, and in winter, without heating or functioning refrigeration units, as Russia bombs Ukrainian thermal power plants. Ukraine’s morgues, especially near the frontline, are inundated, necessitating the use of railcars and mobile containers as makeshift cold storage. At the beginning of the war, Ukrainian Railways allocated 20 railcars for this purpose, each able to hold up to 90 bodies.

“We definitely need help from international partners. […] Our system wasn’t ready for such a huge number of unidentified bodies,” said Belousov at the beginning of 2023. And help has arrived — now forensic experts from France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom are working in Ukraine, as well as the International Commission on Missing Persons and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The latter has been working in Ukraine since the beginning of the war in Donbas in 2014. ICRC staff train specialists in working with remains and help return bodies from both sides to their home countries.

New technologies have also made the identification process easier. In March 2022, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry announced that it was using Clearview facial recognition software, which compares images to a database created from publicly available photos. But experts have their doubts about this type of identification when dealing with decomposing bodies, especially with bloating. Photo databases of the dead can also be used in psychological warfare if there’s a leak. Relatives of dead soldiers on both sides of the war sometimes receive threatening or debasing messages. Pavel Kravchenko was a soldier from Russia’s Irkutsk region who went missing. His girlfriend was sent pictures of his mutilated corpse, along with messages saying: “Come get your corpse or we’ll burn it. He died here like a dog. He went to kill children.”

Exchange

Just as doctors must treat all wounded, government workers and volunteers handle bodies from both sides. When Russian soldiers die in Russian-controlled territory, they’re taken to a processing center in Rostov-on-Don. But Russians often learn of their loved ones’ deaths on the Internet, including from photos uploaded to Ukrainian social media groups, rather than from the military.

If a Russian soldier dies in Ukrainian-controlled territory, the body is sent to the city morgue until an exchange is agreed upon. “We act humanely. Our task is to remain human in any situation, and that’s what we do,” said Oleksiy Yukov, a Black Tulip volunteer. Because Ukraine doesn’t have a database of Russian citizens’ DNA, analysis can only be performed after a transfer. Exchanging the dead, though, happens quite rarely, as it hasn’t been possible to establish a permanent negotiation process between Kyiv and Moscow. Informal agreements on the front line only work in isolated cases, and formal agreements take an excruciatingly long time — in one case, a year and a half.

There isn’t much information about the negotiations; details are kept secret. Certain bodies, like those of officers, special forces, and pilots, are usually considered more valuable and can be exchanged for several rank-and-file soldiers. Sometimes, bodies are exchanged for prisoners of war.

The Red Cross helps organize negotiations and facilitate exchanges, which usually take place in a neutral zone. From there, bodies are delivered to the nearest hospital or morgue. A deceased Russian soldier usually goes from a Ukrainian morgue to a morgue in occupied Donetsk or Luhansk, and then to a morgue in Rostov. There, DNA samples will be taken and, after a match is found, the body will be given to the family for burial. In March 2023, Ukraine said that since the start of the full-scale invasion, it had returned the bodies of 1,426 Russian soldiers. Current data shows the number has now risen to 1,991.

The Russian side has never reported the number of bodies transferred or received. The last exchange took place on August 29, 2023. Ukraine was given the bodies of 84 deceased military personnel, but how many bodies the Russian side received is, once again, unknown. According to an estimate given last February by Sergei Krivenko, head of the human rights group Citizen. Army. Law, at least another 25,000 Russian soldiers may be missing in action.

Forensic anthropologist Photis Andronicou from the International Commission on Missing Persons believes that it will take decades to identify everyone who died in Ukraine, even if the war were to end right now. People will be searching for their loved ones for many years to come — without knowing how they died and without the opportunity to say a proper goodbye.