It is about a small team of Ukrainian volunteers that BFMTV was able to follow this Wednesday in the forests that border Izioum, in the northeast of the country. Their task: to collect the bodies left by the war, and it does not matter if they were Ukrainian or Russian.
However, they do not stay with the latter, but send them to the opposite camp against the remains of their compatriots who have fallen under enemy fire and remained in their possession.
Izioum, an infamous name
izium. The name of this city, which had fewer than 50,000 inhabitants before the war, is no longer unknown to observers since the Russian invasion brought it out of anonymity. First it was the scene of many battles: the Russians took it around March 24, then the Ukrainians drove them out on September 11.
The following September 16, the town’s celebrity took an even more tragic turn, with the discovery of a mass grave with nearly 500 victims of the Russians buried in mass graves.
The bodies that the volunteers are looking for are not buried. They lie while the war brings them down. Since the front is not far away, and the forest they are exploring has not been cleared, they cautiously advance in front of the cameras, helmet on their heads, bulletproof vests on their chests.
“We are careful because our lives depend on it, but also so that the body remains intact and we can send it back to Russia,” explains one of these men, Oleksey.
“We have to show that we are human”
They soon find a body. This is the 205th Russian soldier they have recovered in nine months. But before picking it up, they observe a rigorous procedure. Immediately, we freeze the scene: we delimit it with a tape, like agents at a crime scene waiting for the scientific police. Then again cautious, the team members lie down – “ten seconds” according to Oleksey’s order – before lifting the corpse so as not to take any risk.
It must be said that Oleksey knows the roadmap perfectly well. He has been one of the “Izioum gravediggers” since 2014 and the anti-separatist riots.
“We have to show that we are human, even in this situation. We don’t fight the dead! We always have the same attitude, whatever the nationality of the bodies, ”he explains.
An attitude that contrasts with that of the invader according to him. “Most of the time they don’t care about the dead. They don’t need it, it’s just material. And thus their families will not have any compensation: they will only be ‘disappeared’”, he releases.
another ten years
The body count left in the forest seems to prove him right: Oleksey and his family have exhumed a dozen in this forest alone. The one that was discovered in front of our cameras, however, has an identity.
“In the inside pocket there is a military card – Igor Vladimirovich, born in 1966,” reads Oleksey. And it is thanks to these “Igor Vladimirovitch” that volunteers return to the Russians who receive in exchange the remains of fellow Ukrainian citizens.
The work of this undertaker is also a painstaking job. Oleksey thinks it will last another ten years. As far as he is concerned, things are clear, he will continue for as long as necessary. After all, he chose this life eight years ago.
Source: BFM TV
