The man who gave thousands of Ukrainian families a chance to bury their closest people has been killed while doing that work. Oleksii Yukov, head of the "Platsdarm" search unit, has died, his wife Yevheniia Kaluhina announced on Facebook.
Yukov's work gave families the one thing that lets grief begin: a body and a name. For nearly 25 years, he searched for the remains of the fallen, recovering them from where the state could not reach so that the dead could be identified and returned to their relatives, ending the agony of families whose loved ones were listed as missing.
Yukov received a fatal wound during the exhumation of bodies on the line of contact, according to soldier Serhii Hnezdilov.
He worked where the state could not reach
Yukov's team operated where it was extremely dangerous or where state services could not go. The recovery missions often took place just a few kilometers from the front line, under the threat of repeat shelling or drone attacks, in the conditions in which he was killed.
His "Platsdarm" unit began by excavating the battlefields of the First and Second World Wars, and from 2014 searched for and evacuated those killed in Russia's war against Ukraine. The number of soldiers given a proper burial through his team's efforts runs into the thousands.
Here is what Yukov wrote in his last post.
"As a searcher, I see war in all its manifestations... Here, human life is worth nothing. Here, everything is unlike in the movies. Between two worlds, we gather bodies and souls to bring them back from the war. And those who have touched war remain with it and in it, because it no longer lets anyone go," he said.
What his name meant
Those who knew him spoke of what his work meant.
"A great loss for me personally and for my circle. For most of his life, he returned names to the dead. He lived in Sloviansk," Hnezdilov wrote, calling Yukov's name synonymous with Ukrainian Donbas and respect for every fallen person he returned to their family.
The head of the Sviatohirsk city military administration, Volodymyr Rybalkin, wrote that Yukov was "forever in the ranks."
"Friend, you are incredible. What you did, few people can do," Rybalkin said.
Yukov lived in Sloviansk in Donbas, where he spent his life honoring, and died on the front line, recovering the dead one last time.
