“He brings the dead, so you leave him alone, ok?” says one soldier to another at a checkpoint in the east of Ukraine released, who has just arrive the dreaded military caravan ‘Cargo 200’.
The expression appeared in the Soviet Army during the war in Afghanistan (1979-1989). According to one of the theories, the number refers to the 200 kilos that would weigh on average a soldier sent in a zinc coffin.
Andriy Cherniavski, who heads this specialized unit of the Defense Ministry in the Donetsk region, is on his way to Sviatoguirsk, liberated at the end of September, along a damaged road, full of craters, charred trees and tank wreckage.
From that sector, in seven days, Cherniavski has already brought 19 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers who were reported missing for months, and that before it was impossible to go looking in the occupied zone.
The guide for this expedition is an interactive map with yellow dots associated with GPS coordinates. Each one corresponds to a piece of information supplied to the command about a body left behind or buried after the fighting.
In an isolated house in the city of Oleksandrivka, the caravan stops and the teams inspect the place, alternately occupied by Ukrainians and Russians, as it emerges from debris or ammunition found.
‘Professor’
“We know that part of the 81st brigade and the border guards withdrew from their positions in this house” on April 24 and 25, explains Cherniavski, who is looking among others for the body of a buried soldier that his comrades could not take with them when the withdrawal was ordered.
for that kind of complex searchesa brigade with dogs specialized in exhuming the dead accompanies the Cargo 200 team.
“Our eight dogs are trained differently than those of rescue and search for the living“, says Larisa Borisenko, 51, director of this brigade that belongs to the search and rescue NGO Antares, based in Pavlograd.
Within minutes, having sniffed the garden, ‘Professor’, a young Belgian Shepherd, stands under a tree and frantically digs the earth with its two front legs.
Two soldiers go for shovels. Andriy puts on his white protective uniform.
The body, 50 cm below ground, was buried with a blue sheet and a cushion to support the head.
“This type of ritual is rarely possible; we are lucky, the body is well preserved,” says Andriy Cherniavski.
But things get complicated when from the remains of the body three military jackets are retired. “In each one there is a different name,” she explains.
“No Missing”
In order for a soldier to be formally identified, the DNA must be entered into the Defense Ministry’s database, made up of samples provided by the families of “disappeared” soldiers at the front.
“When we have a DNA test and the results of the sample, we will know who this man is,” he adds.
Andriy Cherniavski started this profession 20 years ago in an NGO specializing in identification of the remains of dead Soviet and German soldiers on Ukrainian territory during World War II.
A beginning of the Donbas war in 2014, he entered the army to offer his experience collecting military corpses.
“Must find each of our dead. It is a slogan. There must not be any disappeared”, he defends. “Everybody deserves ultimate honors“, even the Russian soldiers, whose corpses he also collects“according to international law”.
mined corpse
Andriy is known at the front. In the newly taken over ghost town of Chandrigolove, a soldier guides him to a very isolated farm, cable in hand. This cable will serve as a noose to drag the corpse several meters and verify that it was not “mined” by the enemypractice feared in the liberated zones.
On a ground covered with autumn leaves, a bloated Ukrainian uniformed man who does not contain explosives lies in the greatest solitude. To the side, a shell crater. Around, his belongings scattered.
“It’s very clear here what happened,” says team deputy Oleksander Loviniuk, 53, as he unfolds a white body bag.
The dead soldier’s helmet is next to it, empty, with some hair stuck inside.
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The team will spend 30 minutes, in heavy silence, searching the surrounding area for his head.
“Behind each one of our searches, each one of our efforts, We try to remember that the mourning of a relative depends on thissays Larissa Borisenko.