Body exchanges take place between the two camps to allow families to bury their loved ones. franceinfo reporters were able to follow two Ukrainian soldiers whose mission was to recover the bodies of Russian soldiers.
Risking your life to find the bodies of your enemies: that’s the job of Maxim and Volodymyr. “Here it is important to watch the sky, Volodymyr explains. If there is a drone, hide under the trees!” No Russian drone at the moment, only a few grasshoppers and flies on this country road lined with groves and abandoned fields. “Now we will move forward on the road, breathes Maxime, we will look to the right, to the left. Usually, we don’t talk too much with Volodymyr. It’s quiet work.”
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It is a taboo subject in Ukraine. kyiv never communicates the number of its soldiers killed in combat. The authorities also say nothing about how the bodies of its soldiers who fell on the Russian lines are recovered. And yet, body exchanges regularly take place between the two camps to allow families to bury their loved ones. And it is the “silent work” of Maxim and Volodymyr, in this little corner of the countryside in the Donetsk region. To the south the Russian artillery, to the north the Ukrainian positions, and in the middle a no man’s land around the village of Blahodatne.
“It was an enemy, now it’s a body”
“We must not lose concentration, continues Maxim. We’re looking for clues like helmets and bulletproof vests. And the smell, the lingering smell.” Maxim and Volodymyr carry white body bags which they drop on the ground when they think they have spotted something in the thickets. “Be careful, there is something there, Maxim tells us. Oh no ! It’s a dog’s paw.” The two soldiers from the 38th brigade have been doing this work for two weeks. They found around fifteen bodies. “In this clearing, they died from the shells. And there they were shot.”
On the road, Volodymyr talks about these bodies that he picks up every day. One of them reminded him of the character Yorick, the skull in Hamlet, by Shakespeare. But this setting today reminds us above all of the sound and fury in Macbeth. The sound of Russian strikes in the distance, the fury of the fighting. At the end of the road, after an hour of walking, a dark mass lying on the asphalt. “There’s one! It’s best that you back off…”
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Volodymyr slowly cuts the grenade belt worn by the Russian soldier. Maxim approaches with the body bag. “Recovering the bodies of enemies then allows us to exchange them with our own. It depends on how we arrange it, but generally, it’s one for one. Afterwards, if it’s someone important like an officer, they are willing to trade him, even for the living, to get his body back. I have my niece’s husband who is being held by the Russians and I hope that if we find someone important, we will maybe trade for him or for one of our guys. For me, that’s real motivation.”
The exchange of bodies then takes place on the border with Belarus or in the border regions of Sumy and Kharkiv. “Silence! Hide!” A drone passes overhead. It’s a Ukrainian machine, Maxim recognized it, we can continue. A few meters away, on the ground, a phone pierced by a bullet and a corpse. He’s been there for two months. Fortunately, it is windy today. Both Ukrainians abhor Russian soldiers. However, they are not insensitive to the fate of those they pick up here. Young people, mostly men. “He was an enemy when he was alive, explains Maxim. Now it’s a body and his mother is waiting to bury him with dignity.” “For me, continues Volodymyr, In war, the main thing is not to survive, but rather to remain human.”
We must act quickly now, the Russian strikes are getting closer. “Let’s go get the car!” The two bodies are loaded into the back of Maxim’s pick-up, heading towards a morgue set back from the front. This evening, when returning to the base, Volodymyr will not speak to anyone for a long time. “It’s always like that”, he tells us. He will stare at a point, arms dangling, as if dazed by the sound and fury of war.
Risking your life to find the bodies of your enemies: the report by Boris Loumagne, with Marc Garvenes and Yashar Fazylov