Viktoriia Burzhynska with her son Myroslav at her parents' home in Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine, on March 20. Ms. Burzhynska says her husband went missing within a week of joining the army.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
Inside Viktoriia Burzhynska’s parents’ home in the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine, her two-year-old son runs aimlessly around the room, playing wildly.
He’s too young to understand that his dad went off to war – and that his mom hasn’t heard from him since. Ms. Burzhynska says she doesn’t know what she’ll tell him when he’s older.
The 31-year-old, who was still pregnant with their son when her husband was mobilized, says she understood that he had to help defend the country, but when he got the call that it was time to go, she screamed.
“I thought it could be the last time we could see each other. He said goodbye to me and to Myroslav,” she says, referring to their then-unborn child. They picked his name together, she says, explaining that the first part of his name means “peace” and the second part means “glory.”
“We chose this name just kind of to bring peace to this country, because we really want it to happen.”
More than 30,000 Ukrainians have been reported missing since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, many of them soldiers. They went off to fight, and their loved ones are left wondering what happened to them. It’s possible they’re being held captive by Russian troops. They may have been killed.
The process of finding someone who has gone missing since joining the military is emotionally taxing and often provides few answers. Relatives call morgues, describing their loved ones and asking if they’ve shown up. They provide DNA samples to labs in the event a loved one’s body is returned. And they scour Russian social-media channels, combing through images of dead Ukrainian soldiers.
Morgue workers examine the personal belongings of the deceased in an attempt to identify them, in Dnipro, Ukraine, on March 22.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
Ms. Burzhynska says her husband disappeared within a week of joining the army. He was mobilized on April 7, 2022, and she last heard from him a week later, when he called to say he was headed to training and might lose cell reception. When she couldn’t reach him again, she contacted his unit to ask where he was. They told her to wait a week or so – that perhaps he would reply.
Just days later, she received a letter from the military saying he had been declared a missing person after combat actions.
Ms. Burzhynska says she filled out all the paperwork at the local co-ordination site for people searching for their loved ones. She also provided his photo and personal information.
Providing a DNA sample is a crucial step in case a body is returned and is difficult to identify. Ms. Burzhynska says she initially had trouble providing biological material because her husband’s parents were dead, his brother was also off at war and their son hadn’t been born yet. She provided her husband’s toothbrush to forensic experts but would like to provide a sample of her son’s DNA; she just doesn’t know how to get in touch with the investigator assigned to her case.
“I got an explanation that sometimes an investigator can have 1,000 cases,” she says.
At a morgue in the region’s capital, Dnipro, forensic experts have the grim task of trying to identify dead soldiers, which often means getting body parts that are sometimes entangled with those of animals. On at least a few occasions they have received the bodies of dead Russian soldiers. But when that happens, they call the Defence Ministry to retrieve them.
If a long time passes before experts can identify someone, and if they do not have a DNA sample from relatives, they take the remains and put them in a special database. The person is then temporarily buried.
Outside the city, there’s a growing cemetery with rows of unmarked graves of soldiers who have not yet been identified.
Graves of the Temporarily Unknown Defenders of Ukraine, in Dnipro, on March 21.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
Petro Yatsenko, a spokesperson for the co-ordination headquarters for the treatment of prisoners of war, said DNA testing is an important part of the identification process, but some relatives won’t take a test so their loved ones will still be recorded as missing, even though they may have been killed.
“Some of them want never to know that their nearest person is really dead or killed by Russians, and some of them wanted to – it’s a different situation in every case,” he said.
Artur Dobroserdov, the commissioner for persons missing in special circumstances, said his office tries to keep track of everyone reported missing. He said his office usually gets confirmation about where someone is being detained from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and from former prisoners of war who were released during prisoner exchanges and can report who they saw and what they heard.
But it’s not enough to learn that someone has been killed if there isn’t a body, he said, explaining that if someone from a prisoner exchange says they know for certain that another soldier was killed, that person is still recorded as missing until their body is officially identified.
More than 115,000 relatives of missing Ukrainians and Russians have contacted the ICRC, most of them searching for loved ones who joined the army, said Achille Després, a spokesperson for the ICRC in Ukraine.
Relatives of missing persons and civilians in captivity attend a meeting at the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, in Kyiv, on March 13.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
The organization’s mandate is to work with the warring parties, in confidential bilateral dialogue, to remind them that they have an obligation to notify the ICRC when anyone from the enemy party falls into their hands.
Mr. Després said typically a family member will contact the organization, which will take that information, check its database, share it with officials who might be able to help, speak with prisoners of war who have been repatriated through exchanges and visit people held in places of detention.
The ICRC also receives lists of names from both sides of the conflict, and if there is a match, it can call the family to say it has located their loved one. The official confirmation later comes from the state.
Mr. Després said the ICRC works with both warring parties as much as possible. “Because the longer you wait, the more the chances are that this person will never be identified, will just fall through the cracks and be missing in action.”
When Ms. Burzhynska’s husband first disappeared, she thought he could still be alive, held in Russian captivity. But as time drags on, that hope has begun to wane.
“I have only 1 per cent of hope that he is alive because I did a lot of work, I sent a lot of requests to Ukrainian structures, including the Red Cross and other authorities, and I even tried to look at Telegram channels when there were prisoner exchanges, or dead body exchanges, to try to look at the photos.”
She says Russians post photos of dead Ukrainian soldiers on Telegram, but she has scanned the app so many times that she has memorized their faces. It has affected her mental health, she says, but she’s still looking for answers.
Myroslav was born two months after her husband disappeared, and raising him alone has been hard mentally and physically. She thought about her husband the day their son was born – what it would have been like to have him there with her, watching Myroslav take his first steps.
“I just have one desire to find the truth, to get the truth, because if he was killed I would like to know.”
With reports from Kateryna Hatsenko.