![]() ![]() ![]() Serhiy said that last month he found a dead soldier who had removed the chest plate in his body armor and replaced it with a stolen laptop. The Ukrainians soldiers say they search each Russian body for stolen items, often finding jewelry stuffed into pockets. “This one is my current favorite,” he said, lingering on a photo of a mangled body lying on the side of a road. He ranked his favorite “ orcs” - a derogatory label that Ukrainians use to refer to Russian soldiers - depending on how severe their wounds were. “They’re not people to us anymore,” said a soldier code-named Serhiy, as he helped move bodies from the train car morgue into the semi truck.Ī 36-year-old soldier code-named Vadim flicked through the camera roll on his cellphone, showing off an album of photos he’d taken of dead Russians. They pack shovels into trucks and drive to previously occupied villages to exhume Russian soldiers who had been buried by Ukrainian civilians. They follow up on tips from locals about the smell of dead bodies wafting in from nearby fields. They search areas where the fighting was particularly bloody. Once Ukraine has pushed Russian forces back, Summer and the other body collectors move in. In its first public acknowledgment of a body exchange since the war started, Ukraine said on June 4 that a total of 320 bodies had been swapped on the front line in the Zaporizhia region, with each side getting 160 of their dead. Ukraine has accused Moscow of being unwilling to take back the dead as part of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s effort to conceal the scale of the country’s losses, and the shifting front lines have made it difficult to determine how many dead soldiers have been left behind by either side in enemy-controlled territory. “We only have disgust for them,” he said as he ate a cheeseburger in front of the train car, his appetite unaffected by the stench of dead bodies. Like most soldiers, he spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his code name out of concern that he could be targeted by Russians. “We respect all of the dead - except for these guys,” said a 41-year-old soldier who goes by Summer. The body of a Russian soldier lies amidst abandoned possessions and detritus on in Mala Rohan, Ukraine. The work is gruesome - a stark reminder of the war’s toll, and the inevitable dehumanization that accompanies it. 24, a small group of Ukrainian troops in the eastern border region of Kharkiv has been collecting and identifying the bodies of hundreds of Russian soldiers killed and left behind on the battlefield. The bodies are set to be transported to an undisclosed location to be exchanged for the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers who have died in battle. On a warm day in early June, Ukrainian soldiers, many with cigarettes dangling from their mouths to mask the smell, move more than 80 Russian bodies from a refrigerated train car to the bed of a semitruck. ![]()
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