Head of Ukrainian search unit killed exhuming fallen soldiers

Oleksii Yukov, head of the Ukrainian Platsdarm search unit, has been killed. He had devoted his life to finding and reburying fallen soldiers.

His wife, Yevheniia Kaluhina, shared the news of his death.

Service member and activist Serhii Hnezdilov said Oleksii sustained a fatal injury while exhuming bodies on the front line.

"This is a profound loss for me personally and for the people close to me," he wrote. "For much of his life, he gave names back to the dead. He lived in Sloviansk. His name will always be associated with Ukrainian Donbas and with respect for every fallen soldier he helped bring back to their family."

What is known about Oleksii Yukov

In a feature about Platsdarm by UP.Zhyttia, Oleksii Yukov said he had spent 27 years searching for the bodies of fallen and missing service members. As a teenager, he joined a group that carried out excavations at Second World War battle sites.

Oleksii was from Sloviansk. In 2014, he became head of the search group at the Platsdarm Association of Researchers of Military and Historical Heritage. During the Russian occupation of his hometown, he helped evacuate the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.

"When the full-scale war started, there was not only more work, but more pain," Oleksii said. "I could not have imagined it would be like this, although I understood that the war was not over and that Russia would soon come back. But back then, everyone laughed at that."

Platsdarm is a volunteer project that works with the Ukrainian authorities. Oleksii described his group as representatives of society. Over the four years of the full-scale war, the searchers found the bodies of more than 3,500 soldiers who had fought in the Russia-Ukraine war.

"We always set off early in the morning," Oleksii said, describing the work. "If it's a safe area, we survey the territory with a drone. We check trenches, craters, shell holes, belongings, rubbish bins. Then we divide the area into grids and search for mines and explosive devices using probes and metal detectors. We call in bomb disposal experts, who destroy or neutralise them. Then we carefully search the area for bodies.

We usually work until late at night. If we don't finish and it's a long way back, we set up camp. Many bodies are dragged away by animals. Then we have to search even through faeces. We've found teeth, finger bones and pieces of bone that way – things that were not digested."

Oleksii narrowly escaped death once in Kharkiv Oblast. His group was searching for the body of a service member from the 95th brigade.

"I went ahead, as I always do. I was walking, and I heard a click. I instantly jumped to the side – and then came the explosion. Behind me was a wall of sand-lime brick, and it was simply blown away. I was lying there thinking: my legs are gone, I'll be on prosthetics now. I looked – they were still there, but numb and wounded, with blood spraying out. I could move them, so my spine was intact. But I couldn't see out of one eye. I realised it was gone. The tactical goggles had been pierced right through," he recalled.

"The guys started running towards me. They pulled me into the car and took me to Kramatorsk. For the first week I couldn't walk at all. Every day I exercised my legs, because there was no time to wait. And within two weeks I was back at the front on crutches, helping the guys."

Subscribe on Patreon to back our journalism long-term.