For the first time in Ukraine, 19 soldiers will be buried in a mass grave
2 May 2024 12:21
In Chernivtsi, for the first time since the full-scale Russian invasion, soldiers will be buried in a mass grave. 19 soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were killed in an air raid in March 2022 in Ludvynivka, Kyiv region. The lawyer of the families of the victims, Galina Yanko, said this on her Facebook page, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports
“16 out of 19 soldiers of the 10th separate mountain assault brigade ‘Edelweiss’ based in Kolomyia, Ivano-Frankivsk region, have been identified. This was extremely difficult because the bodies were badly burned after the explosion. Neither Ukrainian nor foreign experts were able to identify the DNA of the other men.
As all the boys served in the same brigade and most of them were from Chernivtsi, the families decided to bury them all in the same grave.
According to the lawyer of the families of the victims, the burial will include soldiers from Chernivtsi, Khmelnytsky, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Lviv, Dnipro, Kirovohrad, Poltava and Donetsk regions.
Since its independence, Ukraine has never seen such a joint burial of soldiers. Procedurally, it was impossible.
“All law enforcement officers from the prosecutor’s office, police, SBU, forensic experts, experts from The Hague, and the mayor’s office in Chernivtsi helped us. All of them I have listed have never had such experience in their practice to bury the remains of 19 soldiers together. But the guys in heaven helped us the most. If you knew what we went through together with our parents and relatives… it was definitely the parents’ prayers and the boys’ desire to be found and to find eternal peace that helped us,”
– yanko said.
The soldiers killed in the Kyiv region, whose identities have been established, have already received awards from the President, and the rest will receive them soon, the lawyer said.
