Head of Ukrainian search unit killed during exhumation of fallen soldiers

Oleksii Yukov, head of the Ukrainian Platsdarm search unit, has been killed. He 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. 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," he wrote.

What is known about Oleksii Yukov

Oleksii Yukov told UP.Zhyttia that he had been searching for the bodies of fallen and missing service members for 27 years. As a teenager, he joined a group that carried out excavations at Second World War battle sites.

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

"With the start of the full-scale war, there was not only more work, but more pain. I could not have imagined it would be like this. Although I understood that the war did not end and that Russia would soon come again. But back then, everyone laughed at that," Oleksii said.

Platsdarm is a volunteer project that works with the Ukrainian authorities. Yukov 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 of the Russia-Ukraine war.

"We always set off early in the morning. If it is a safe area, we survey the territory with a drone. We check trenches, craters, shell holes, belongings and 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 do not finish and it is a long way back, we set up camp. Many bodies are dragged away by animals. Then we have to search even through faeces. That is how we found teeth, finger bones and bone pieces – things that were not digested," Oleksii said, describing the work.

Once, in Kharkiv Oblast, Oleksii nearly died. 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 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 will be on prosthetics now. I looked – they were still there, but numb and wounded, with blood spraying. I could move them, so my spine was intact. But I could not see out of one eye. I realised it was gone. The tactical goggles had been pierced right through.

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

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