Russia targets Kiev and Lviv in night strikes
LVIV, Ukraine – As the bodies of fallen soldiers steadily fill a hillside in a military cemetery in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, the old unmarked graves of those killed in previous wars are being dug up to make way for a seemingly endless stream of dead since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
On Monday afternoon, half a dozen gravediggers took a break in the shadows, waiting for the last coffin they would bury at the Lychakiv cemetery. As they smoked cigarettes and shielded themselves from the sun, they lamented the devastation Russia had wrought. They said they are bracing for more deaths as fighting intensifies during Ukraine’s counter-offensive.
On a sloping hill, two men who died hundreds of miles apart were buried next to each other. Bohdan Didukh, 34, was killed last week by a mine in the front lines of the Zaporizhzhia region of southern Ukraine, where the first stages of Ukraine’s counter-offensive have begun. Three days later, Oleh Didukh, 52, died of a heart attack while serving in an air defense unit in the relative safety of the western part of the country.
They were honored side by side at a joint funeral in Lviv on Monday. Both their families were overcome with grief as the earth shoveled onto the two chests came down in a succession of thuds. The men, who shared the same surname but never knew each other in life, were united in death in the service of their country.
One of the harsh realities of the Russian war in Ukraine is that even in a city far from active fighting, such as Lviv, soldiers killed at the front over the course of the 15-month conflict are being sent back to their hometowns, sometimes in groups, and at the same time put to rest. It is seen as an efficient way to get through as many funerals as the dead keep coming.
During the funeral service for the two men at a Greek Catholic church in central Lviv, where the air was full of incense, the priest said he had assumed the couple were father and son because of their names and ages. Although their families were not related, their pain accompanied them, he said.
Funerals for fallen soldiers have taken on a grim routine in Lviv. After the church ceremony, the coffins were loaded into vans and driven to the central square where a single trumpeter played. The procession then proceeded to the cemetery.
Residents stopped along the route to the cemetery to pay their respects. A young girl stood beside her father, a small brown shopping bag in her hand, staring straight ahead as the coffins passed by. Some bystanders fell to their knees.
At the cemetery, Olena Didukh, Bohdan Didukh’s wife, fainted momentarily, overwhelmed by grief and the midday sun. Her sister stopped her and put her arm around her back.
Kateryna Havrylenko, 50, who works for the city that maintains the graves, loaded soil onto a wheelbarrow. There are funerals here almost every day, she said.
“With the counter-offensive, many young men and women will be killed,” she said. “Words cannot express how difficult it is. Very, very difficult. Even if they are strangers, they are someone’s children, just like I have a child.”
At the top of the hill, city officials have begun excavating the unmarked graves of soldiers buried as early as World War I, young men who died at the turn of the last century making way for those who fell in this war.
At the start of the war with Russia last year, there was only a small group of freshly dug graves on a hill in part of the cemetery. Now nearly 500 soldiers are buried here in plots that fill half the hill, she said, with more to come.
“It is so hard to imagine – last summer there were so few. And now there are so many.” She added with a distant look, “And how many will be left until the war is over?”
Daria Mitiuk contributed reporting.