Ukrainians Struggle to Retrieve Fallen Loved Ones

The Lingering Pain of the Missing

Myroslava Melnychenko knows exactly where her younger brother’s body lies. She has seen grainy drone footage of him being killed in battle, but he is in a place that neither she nor the experts tasked with retrieving the bodies of fallen soldiers can reach. Nearly three years after his death, the pain of not being able to bring him home continues to weigh on her.

“It's painful that he can't be brought back, but I still hope that one day we'll manage to do it,” she says. Oleksii Melnychenko is counted among 146,000 “missing” people from both Ukraine and Russia in the war by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). This definition includes anyone who has not been accounted for or whose remains have not been retrieved, even when there is clear evidence they are dead.

For families like hers, the lack of a burial means they cannot honor their loved ones the way they deserve. “Those who are listed as missing remain in a kind of limbo,” she explains. “It's absolutely vital for Oleksii to have a place where he can be buried, so we have a place to go where you know his life and his death are acknowledged. I just don't want him to simply vanish into thin air.”

Melnychenko, who works as a psychologist, remembers growing up with her brother, Oleksii, who was more easygoing and light-hearted. He volunteered for the Ukrainian army soon after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. He was fighting on the frontline in the village of Marinka near Donetsk when he died later that year.

“We knew it was such a brutal place in terms of the fighting,” she says. Despite the danger, she maintained regular contact with her brother until January 2023, when their mother was informed that Oleksii was missing. Melnychenko spent years researching to confirm her brother’s fate. She contacted people who knew him, including fellow soldiers, who told her he had been killed while leading a mission. They mentioned Russian drone footage of the battle and of his death.

“His fellow soldiers didn’t want me to see the video so I wouldn’t get traumatized, but I found it myself. I watched it and made sure it was my brother,” she recalls. Learning the truth had a huge impact on her. “I was unwell for a long time. I went to the doctors, had treatments, and I'm still trying to put myself back together,” she says.

She believes bringing her brother home is an important part of her healing. “What made us human wasn’t any invention, but the moment we started to bury our dead,” she says.

Andres Rodriguez Zorro, a forensic coordinator with the ICRC, describes the “ambiguous loss” felt by families who cannot retrieve the bodies of their loved ones. “Can you imagine that they have this uncertainty, if their relative is alive or dead?” he explains.

He says that the kind of weaponry and technology used, along with a constantly-changing frontline, make Russia’s invasion a particularly unique conflict. “This is the first time we're facing volumes of hundreds of thousands of missing or killed in action,” he says. “We’re talking about a very high level of hostilities, the conflict is very active, and also because of the type of weapons, the recovery is very challenging…even if there is some kind of reduction of the hostilities to get there and recover the bodies, they [recovery personnel] are exposing their lives because there is a lot of mines and unexploded things,” he adds.

Zorro says his mission in Ukraine, which he has just completed, has been “very challenging” but “for sure my best mission.” He consistently spent time looking for new ways to improve the recovery and identification processes. “How to provide the process of search and recovery, the transportation of bodies…how to properly repatriate these bodies and support the process of proper burial,” he explains.

The bodies of 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers were returned by Russia on August 19, showing possible hope that more families can secure closure and properly bury their loved ones. In return, Ukraine also returned 19 bodies to Russia. However, tens of thousands of unaccounted bodies remain buried and out of reach on the battlefield.

Bohdana Teslenko is another Ukrainian left with just memories of a loved one. Her father, Oleksandr, is believed to have been killed during fighting in 2023. Although his death has not been confirmed, Teslenko says she has seen photos of her father’s body. “There are no words that can truly describe what it's like to see your dad, the best dad in the world, to be in that photo,” she says.

Teslenko’s father, Oleksandr, had long worked in security when he first volunteered for the Donbas battalion in 2014 during Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the following Russian-backed conflict in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. In 2022, he once again volunteered for the Ukrainian army as Russia’s full-scale invasion began.

“During holidays, we would all get together and record videos saying how much we love him, how proud we are of him, and send him these kinds of videos,” Teslenko recalls when her father was deployed. “Dad absolutely loved it. He later said that whenever he was without the internet, he would re-watch these videos, and that was actually something that gave him strength,” she continues.

In June 2023, Teslenko’s father would return home for a short break from fighting on the frontline. Teslenko and her mother spent the last day with him looking for a raincoat that her father would take back with him. Weeks later, on July 25, Teslenko’s mother was informed that Oleksandr had been killed. Teslenko remembers: “The first few hours, we cried because we didn’t know what to do. We couldn’t be prepared for a situation like this.”

Three days later, they found images of Oleksandr’s body on Russian Telegram channels. “My heart nearly stopped, and my mom and sister were with me. They were holding me, holding my hands, holding my face as well.” Teslenko also learned of his last moments. She says that a Russian Black Hussars unit dressed in Ukrainian security uniforms advanced towards her father. Oleksandr reportedly covered his unit for their retreat.

“They ripped off his Chevron, little Ukrainian flag and shoved it into his mouth and said: ‘He tried to sneak up, so we killed him.’” Teslenko has since been working with the support of the Red Cross in the search for his remains, receiving emotional support from the organization over the last two years as she tries to get her father’s body home.

The 27-year-old is also planning to take part in an experimental DNA program and has given consent for her data to be used should it go ahead. In the meantime, Teslenko is still waiting for answers. “He was a hero, and it hurts so much that we still cannot retrieve his body and deal with the situation…He gave his life to save six others, and for that only, he deserves every award and all the possible recognition,” she says. She believes her father would approve. Before Oleksandr’s death, he spoke with Teslenko’s mother about the possibility of dying on the frontline. She recalls him saying: “It's terrifying to lie in the field, and it's very important for the body to be brought back.”