A team of volunteers searches for the corpses and remains of Russian soldiers buried in the positions that the Kremlin Army occupied near Kharkov to exchange them for the mortal remains of their own.
It is a thankless and sinister questwhich must be repeated over and over again because “the lands they move” and what is not visible one day, “to the seven months” can emerge. You have to take it”with humor“, that “is everything” in life, a circumstance that does not diminish the importance that the makers themselves attach to the task they complete.
Day in and day out, Antón, a member of the J-9 unitHuronea between the positions that the Russian Army occupied in the surroundings of Kharkiv during the start of the war, when they tried to besiege the second Ukrainian city, mainly in search of corpses or mortal remains of “enemy” soldiers to be later exchanged with Moscow, although also of captured locals by occupying forces. He does it for reasons “ecological”to certify one day before international justice that Russia is a “offending state” and “terrorist“But above all get them to return to the country and be buried”on Ukrainian soil“with all due honor and decorum, your”friends” and “comrades in arms“.
The right-hand drive Mitsubishi Pajero, a circumstance that reveals the japanese origin of the vehicle, advance To stumble through the icy roads of the pitomnik forest, to a dozen of kilometres from the city in a northerly direction. There comes a time when the foliage and the fallen trunks on the road make it impossible for the vehicle to move forward, forcing Antón and his team of two helpers to continue on the road. walking. At that moment, the mission becomes dangerous, and from then on he orders to circulate along paths and routes already traveled, always following the tracks left in the snow by the first in line and without moving away Not a group moment. is the The only guarantee that no one will take a wrong step and step on a mine or an explosive left behind by the retreating occupiers, in a place where, around last spring, “a violent battle“, Explain.
In the investigations “we are guided by the information that the informants have provided us, our own intelligence, but also by the smell of death“, he explains, as he digs up the remains of an abandoned Russian Army uniform from the snow, and rummages in the pockets inside for clues. the identification from its owner. Asked if it would not be a good idea to employ sniffer dogs In his work, Antón resorts to humor, and responds to the invective with a sharp jest more typical of an Andalusian rogue than of a circumspect character born in the ex-Soviet space. “We lack trained dogs, and my Boniface he is not capable of doing this job”, he replies sarcastically, while showing a photograph, stored on his mobile phone, of a white Spitz dog, his companion pet, clearly inappropriate for the task that the master performs. last time he dug up a dead man was ago three daysa moment that he has also immortalized thanks to the camera from your smartphone.
While digging between the sunken trenches Due to the bombardments, while investigating with his flashlight in the underground shelters that the Russian troops opened in his day, the body searcher emits, almost without meaning to, a cry in Russian, his mother tongue that, however, he prefers not to use in front of foreign. “This is interesting!” she exclaims. From a hole in the snow, he extracts the frozen vest of a Russian soldier, adorned with the black and orange ribbon of Saint George, an emblem prohibited in Ukraine that the military and the inhabitants of the neighboring country usually brandish during their patriotic celebrations.
Immediately afterwards, continue removing the frozen ground and the snow from the hole, given the possibility that he could find human remains in that same place. And although the finding is not finally confirmed, from among the pockets of the garment he extracts a handful of batteries of the Energizer brand, eventuality that allows him to launch a new sarcasm, this time about the poor equipment of your enemy: “These Russians should have Duracell batteries, they last longer.”