On the second day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Yuriy Kovaliv, owner of a meat processing factory and shop, received a call from a military enlistment office. He promptly contacted his employees: 45 workers, two senior managers, and an accountant, declaring, “That’s it. I’m gone. You manage here. Everyone work together.”
Inside the enlistment office, dozens of conscripts had already gathered. An officer inquired who possessed B or C category driving licenses, prompting those who did to step forward.
He then asked, “Who is not afraid to undertake tasks that few can stomach?” Five more men advanced.
The officer’s final query resonated through the room: “Who owns a large vehicle, preferably with a refrigeration unit?” Yuriy, the sole respondent, realized his meat delivery truck fit the bill. In that moment, he discovered his grim assignment: to drive to combat zones and evacuate soldiers who were killed in action (KIA).
Yuriy began his service on the Kyiv frontline on 26 February 2022. The war’s early days saw a critical shortage of vehicles and drivers for evacuation, compelling Yuriy to undertake multiple transports in rapid succession. During one such mission, a pair of French journalists approached him urgently.
“Tell us about your work here. How are you managing the body recoveries?” they pressed.
Yuriy, focused on his somber duty, tersely replied, “Go away. There’s no time.”
Yuriy recounts a poignant scene: “The father of a fallen soldier sat on the curb, weeping. He had been unable to retrieve his son from the morgue for three days. There was no one to help, and the journalists were merely darting about in search of sensational stories.”
After Ukrainian forces secured victory in the Battle of Kyiv in April 2022, Yuriy’s duties took him to the southern frontline. Later, he was reassigned to the eastern front. There, he covered nearly 80 kilometers of the battleline near Avdiivka, transporting the remains of fallen soldiers to the city of Dnipro. From there, other crews would continue the solemn journey, delivering the deceased to their homes across Ukraine.
The psychological toll
Every day at 6:00 AM, Yuriy departs Dnipro and drives 200 kilometers to the front line, following coordinates sent to his phone. At each location, he retrieves fallen soldiers. One, two, three, four … By late afternoon, he drives back to the Dnipro morgue with his somber cargo.
“Ideally, I’d place, say, three body bags in the vehicle without crowding them,” Yuriy explains. “But that’s a rare occurrence; usually, there are more. Of course, I’d prefer to transport one, at most two or three. Then again, I would like to sit at the base, drinking tea and coffee, avoiding this task entirely. But it’s a necessity.”
AT each retrieval site, Yuriy carefully places the fallen soldiers in body bags and loads them onto his vehicle. He meticulously completes and signs documents detailing the deceased – name, date, manner of death, and description (when possible). A local commander co-signs. Yuriy then loads the KIA body bags into the evacuation van, secures the signed documents, and drives off, heading for the next spot, wasting no time.
When an ambulance appears on the road, Yuriy pulls over to let it pass. “The ambulance goes first, I go second,” he explains. “We all understand the urgency — to deliver the deceased to their parents and loved ones, to return the body to the earth, to bury.” However, an ambulance has priority because it transports the wounded.
Some claim they would rather fight in the trenches than evacuate the fallen. “After all this, I must be crazy,” Yuriy says, admitting the psychological burden of his job. He finds that dark humor is the only way to cope. “Did you tie the bag well so he doesn’t trundle too much?” one driver may ask another. “You can skip a meal,” Yuriy says, “but you have to joke and laugh to keep going.”
“I no longer know whether we laugh more or cry,” he adds. The reality of their situation, or even recalling it, can be so overwhelming that even the most hardened souls can crumble.
“When I’m home, during my time off, I watch the news, and find myself tearing up. I go to church, I stand there and weep. Why? Who knows. Perhaps it’s a moment of release. During the day, alone in the car, you can cry two or three times while driving. You’re alone, and the whole thing just overwhelms you. Like when I see a boy, only 19 years old. I need to find out who he is, where he’s from, what happened. Or when I take a KIA’s ID and notice he has a letter with him. His daughter has written, ‘Dearest Dad, please come back soon.’ And you cry.”
The grim duty of identification
Yuriy’s responsibilities include identifying the fallen, a task often fraught with challenges. He shares photos documenting the process. “Three handfuls of ash – three bodies,” he explains, describing his most extreme case. Three small heaps of ash, carefully collected in plastic bags, each with an assigned number. Yuriy recovered these remains in a military vehicle destroyed by a direct hit, leaving it completely incinerated. He attempted to distinguish individual bodies by nearby metal objects, such as belt buckles or ID tags. After his best efforts, he secured the packages and placed them in his van.
Another photo shows half of a soldier’s body. His head and chest are intact, but the entire lower part of his body has been pulverized into a mush of entrails and blood. Yuriy’s collection includes many more distressing images of mutilated bodies, some beyond identification.
When identification proves difficult, Yuriy collects as much information as possible on-site. Nearby soldiers may have witnessed a comrade’s death or known his identity. Without proper documentation, these crucial details could be lost forever. At the very least, Yuriy tries to record the soldier’s unit name, striving for the most specific information. He collects and documents any personal items found — phones, rings, or other belongings — including this in the official KIA documentation.
Once, Yuriy encountered a deceased soldier difficult to identify, but who had a notebook with phone numbers. Yuriy dialed one, and a woman answered, confused by the unfamiliar caller. Wife? Mother? Sister? With a heavy heart, he inquired about the features of the soldier who had fought near Avdiivka. Sobbing was the only response.
Though not obligated to inform relatives of their loss, Yuriy explores all avenues when no other identification method remains. The alternative is grim: the soldier joins the list of missing personnel, the body placed in the morgue as “Unknown.” The limbo can persist for months or years, leaving relatives uncertain whether their loved one is alive, captured, or dead. In such cases, families receive only the designation MIA (Missing in Action).
DNA testing serves as a last resort, employed when relatives suspect a particular body might be their loved one but cannot be certain. “We use DNA when a potential relative arrives to confirm the remains but can’t recognize the body or chooses not to look,” Yuriy says.
The constant pull of duty
When Yuriy first returned home on leave, he spent three days recuperating, gradually readjusting to civilian life.
“Initially, you feel as if you’re recovering from a knockout,” he explains. “Later, you begin to view peaceful life critically. Then stop criticizing and start thinking about what to take back to the front. You’re not really at home, the front is constantly with you. You remain active in all the chats, still connected with commanders and comrades.”
Ukrainian service members are entitled to 30 days of annual leave. However, instead of taking a break, many use this time for medical appointments, equipment repairs, or organizing volunteer supplies for fellow soldiers. Yuriy followed suit, even spending UAH 40,000 ($1,100) on overdue car repairs. His municipality contributed additional funds — one of many examples of local support for military personnel. While 81% of national taxes fund defense, municipalities allocate the remaining 19% at their discretion, sometimes drawing criticism from service members when support seems lacking.
A friend recently offered Yuriy EUR 20,000 for a new van. Yuriy declined, saying “I can manage with this one. I’ll fix what’s most necessary and keep driving. Better to find the guys who need drones.”
“20,000 euros seems like a large amount, but some people donate such amounts, and that’s normal,” Yuriy reflects. “There will always be a segment of society indifferent to anything but their personal comfort. But that isn’t an excuse for anyone else to do less or fight less.”
Sacrifice knows no class
Yuriy recounts retrieving the remains of Ostap Onistrat, the 21-year-old son of prominent Kyiv banker Andriy Onistrat. Ostap was the first in his family to volunteer to take up arms, his father followed suit. Ostap’s life was cut short near the village of Pavlivka in Donetsk Oblast while he was operating a drone. “It seemed relatively safe, simply piloting the drone,” Yuriy says. “But when I collected him, the body before me was unrecognizable.”
“He went to war and I could do nothing but follow suit,” Andriy says, emotional during the interview. A self-made millionaire, Andriy could have avoided service, and Ostap, at 21, was under the age of mobilization. Asked if he would now dissuade his son from serving, Andriy, despite his tears, says no.
“Logic urges me to say that I wouldn’t have allowed him to go,” Andriy reflects. “But he changed during his service. He became a different person. Now I wonder, could everything that happened to him have been erased? He gained such respect… Everything around him seemed to sing … He opened up.”
Andriy was Ostap’s commander. The day his son died seemed to stretch into eternity. He knew his son was on a mission. Andriy stopped by a well to scoop up some water to drink, his glasses fell into the well, and an inexplicable sense of anxiety overtook him. Moments later, he saw a flood of calls on his phone. The second battalion commander, Khazik, had left him an audio message, “I know there is a problem. I can send my evacuation team.”
“Something stirred inside me,” Andriy remembers. “I tried calling Ostap, but he didn’t answer. Then Khazik told me my son was gone. It took an hour to drive there. When I arrived, they had already loaded him into a vehicle. I wanted to see him, but they wouldn’t let me. I followed the transport for a long 30 minutes, unable to believe it. Later, understood why they didn’t show him to me. There was nothing left. They gave me the morgue’s number. I didn’t speak to anyone. I just went and saw everything for myself.”
Nightmares
Sometimes, returning to Dnipro after a hard day, lying down, and drifting off to sleep, Yuriy will have nightmares. In one recurring dream, bones and skulls swirl above his head. He finds solace in the fact that when the fallen appear in his dreams, they assure him that he did nothing wrong; everything is alright.
Once, Yuriy was driving to retrieve a young fallen soldier. The soldier’s father, who had fought in a different unit, accompanied Yuriy to the site.
On the return journey, Yuriy maintained his usual swift pace until the father requested, “Wait, don’t hurry.”
Puzzled, Yuriy asked why.
The father’s response was heart-wrenching: “Just let me spend a little more time with my son. Don’t rush. Let me stay with the boy a bit longer …”
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