Alexei clears his throat without his face barely expressing a single gesture. A whitish mist veils his eyes, while he holds a portion of skull. Y vertebral segments that melt in your hand. Doesn’t utter a word. Just observe. Squatting down, he shakes with his blue gloves the military uniform that once housed a man. The jacket and pants still retain their shape. But the inside is empty. Air. He suddenly rescues a torn and stained piece of paper from one of his pockets. ‘Andrei. Moscow,’ he reads aloud, releasing his voice for the first time. “There is a phone number registered. Good. It helps us locate the origin,” he says. Whoever it was, it was a russian soldier.
Again, silence prevails. Alexei and his Platzdarm volunteer group They face a complex task. Delicate. They must identify los four bodies that they have recovered from the front. “If I died, I would like them to look for me, to return me home,” Alexei confesses, exuding a certain tenderness, without missing any detail of the task. Alexei converses with the inert, who speaks to him in his own way, offering him clues to reconstruct a possible identity. The history of that body that time and death, in alliance, have disintegrated. Hundreds of flies flutter excitedly, tracing infinite circles. They are inevitably attracted by the stench given off by the remains that lie on the white canvas, now browned. Putrescine drips. Acids.
Except for that note, a rusty belt and some blackened boots partially blown out by a mine, the rest has vanished. “Vlad, please,” Alexei cries to his fellow volunteer, who brings him, following the usual procedure, a whiteboard to reflect the extracted information with a marker. Alexei lists. Vlad scores, and a third volunteer photograph valuable sections of the body, illuminating them with the flash. For now, the identity of the corpse is reduced to a handful of disjointed words, and a piece of cardboard that assigns it a number. The cipher of fallen soldiers recovered by Platzdarm now amounts to 1.500.
Body finders in the Ukrainian war / XIMENA BORRAZÁS
The disguise resource
The other three bodies, somewhat more whole and viscous, this time, also belong to russian soldiers. A blister of ibuprofen, glasses without the left lens, a credit card, a tattoo on the back, or a dirty Georgiev ribbon – which nostalgically represents the patriotism of “Mother Russia” – reveal its origins. However, the duda always plays an essential role. This is the case of the last corpse, which still has its feet, covered with some socks of the Ukrainian Army. Alexei whispers something to his partner in Ukrainian and they share impressions until partially solving the enigma: “yes, he is Russian. He would be part of a sabotage team. Possibly he occupied a military base and dressed with them.” Alexei clarifies that, sometimes, “if we are not sure, we write down “unknown” so that the DNA tests can be reinforced.” Is habitual how much Russian soldiers as Ukrainians “disguise themselves to cut positions”.
Meet bodies of both sides It is common on the war front. The remains pile up after the battle. “Our task prior to identification is to clean the combat perimeter. Forests or moors where their lines and ours mix. We combed the area from the first to the last tree,” Alexei clarifies, while remembering one of the missions that has had the most impact on him in recent years.
It happened in Klishchiivkaal sur de Bakhmut. “I have never seen anything like this, such a number of bodies scattered. I have seen many things, but not this. The entire hillside was covered with bodies, there was not even space to set foot, corpses of combatants from 2022, 2023 and 2024 had accumulated,” says Alexei. Are psychologically extreme situationsin which, furthermore, danger always lurks. Platzdarm goes where no one else does. Carrying bodies of fallen soldiers for kilometers, under the lethal dome that surrounds the war front, guarded by hosts of executioner drones.
Body finders in the Ukrainian war / XIMENA BORRAZÁS
The ‘death zone’
In just one year, the situation is infinitely more dangerous. The call ‘death zone’ It covers more and more ground and there are hardly any safe sectors. Their logistics have been radically altered and they use fog to work, because it somewhat hinders the visibility of the drones. Almost making a pact with the mist, “we waited for the moment to enter,” says Alexei. At that moment, perhaps, they have a chance to recover the body.
The commitment of Alexei and their equipment is such that they file anguish and awe in a deep compartment of their mind, which they only resort to once they are left alone with their thoughts. It’s what has sustained them all this time. “For me it is very important that all these souls have a last dignified rest. That their families can say goodbye at a funeral, dedicating to them the words that perhaps they were never able to express to them in life and that they can go to a sacred place to honor their memory,” argues Alexei, who has been ““body finder”.
He started when he was just a teenager, because even then he felt it was his duty. “Until 2014 we dedicated ourselves to searching for the fallen of the First and Second World Wars and the victims of political repression,” he recalls. “We found graves where people had been shot by the Nazis or the NKVD. They were Soviet, German and Allied soldiers. We buried them, sent their remains to funeral associations or repatriated them if contact with relatives arose. “We brought them home.”account.
Body finders in the Ukrainian war / XIMENA BORRAZÁS
Direct contact with the family
And it is not an easy task, he acknowledges. They also deal with the heartbreak. “It is very painful. A lot. Seeing a destiny destroyed. A human destiny. You feel something for the dead that you never thought you could feel. It is difficult to explain and also depends on who the deceased is, especially if you find him, after maintain direct contact with their parents and having known that person’s path from the beginning to their last breath. The pain passes through you, because you become part of that family,” he says, somewhat crestfallen, discovering his interior.
Alexei and his team continue to be a kind of link between life and death: “It is very difficult, because you are the bearer of misfortunes, of a terrible truth that families will have to live with forever. They will have to understand that they will never again see or hug that person who is already gone.”
But Alexeiover the years, has managed to find some relief. A motivation, even shared by his own. His children and his wife, who has also participated in several searches. What helps them move forward: “for us it is an honor if we manage to return a family to their son, husband, brother or father. It means that the effort has been worth it.” And the nationality doesn’t matter. Nor on which side they fought. Whether they are Ukrainians. Whether they are Russian. For him Platzdarm volunteer group all souls are equal. White. That they need to move forward without guilt or resentment that traps them in this world.
Alexei Above all, he defends the importance of keeping his humanity intact, since it is something that wars already take away. And he reflects: “War has taught me to what extent a person can become a non-human. Something worse than an animal. Because in war human life is worth nothing. War shows black and white, without nuances.” Maybe, he adds, “it’s too stupid. And I don’t quite understand it or I don’t want to, but until people understand that we are all inhabitants of this same planet, nothing will change.” Even so, Alexei has a dream: “Let it all end. For everyone. The consequences are terrible. The wounds, physical and psychological, will be suffered forever. And many, too many, will never return.”
Subscribe to continue reading
