The unidentified: Stories of Bucha families still searching for missing loved ones over a year after Russia's atrocities

More than a year will pass before the relatives of Roman Shadlovskyi and Oleksandr Prykhodko will be able to come to their graves and see nameplates on the cross, not numbers.

The men from Bucha were abducted by the Russian military. Then they killed the Ukrainians and dumped their bodies in a mass grave. Their relatives did not know where they were for months, and then waited for months for the fact of their deaths to be officially confirmed.

Learn more about what Roman and Oleksandr's relatives had to go through in the article.

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Roman Shadlovskyi was 27 years old. He had a degree in management and worked at a gas station. In 2017, he signed a contract with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and became a soldier of the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade, with the call sign Ramses. He defended Avdiyivka and received an award for that. During the war in Donbas, he suffered two concussions. After returning to civilian life in 2019, he worked as a security guard.

Roman was killed by the Russian military in Bucha in March 2022.

Oleksandr Prykhodko is forever 31. He was born in Bucha. He was a chef by training. He loved to cook for himself and his family and had experience working in a restaurant in Kyiv. In the last period of his life, he worked in the field of funeral services, helping to make monuments. In his leisure time, he loved to fish and had a talent for drawing.

Oleksandr was also killed by the Russian military in Bucha in March 2022.

March 2022. Abduction

"A great war will start and there will be purges. They are monsters, dad. I fought, I know. They will not spare anyone," Roman Shadlovskyi told his father Valentyn shortly before February 24, 2022.

The father hoped that his son's words were just words. Although deep down he realized that Roman was right. On March 4, 2022, the Russian military was already in Bucha. They gathered near the dormitory on Yastremska Street where Roman and Valentyn had lived.

The men hid Roman's Ukrainian Armed Forces uniform and an award for Avdiyivka. However, during the raid, the occupiers turned everything in their house upside down and found both. The father and son were ordered to undress. When one of the occupiers saw Valentyn's tattoo from the 1987-89 war in Afghanistan, he held out his hand to shake it. But Valentyn did not extend his own.

"I pretended to be too busy getting dressed. I didn't want to shake hands at all," he says.

Roman also had tattoos, though none of them were patriotic symbols.

Shortly before the full-scale war, Roman broke his collarbone. His father emphasized this to the Russian military. They replied: "Don't worry, we'll get him treated there."

"At that moment, I realized that I could soon lose my son," Valentyn recalls.

The men were taken outside. Valentyn was directed toward the civilians who were nearby, and Roman and his fellow neighbors were taken in an unknown direction without explanation.

Among those mates was Oleksandr Prykhodko. Unlike Roman, he did not expect this turn of events. Oleksandr did not serve in the army, he was never at war. According to his stepmother Kateryna, he thought that everything would be fine, so he refused his relatives who persuaded him to come to their village of Nemishayeve, which is not far away.

"On March 4, we lost contact with Sasha, and on March 6, we found out that he had been kidnapped," Kateryna recalls.

She admits that she would never have thought that such a hell would happen. If Kateryna could have even imagined it, she would have convinced Sashko to come to them and stay together.

"And if we hadn't managed to persuade him, we would have run to fetch him through the fields under fire," Kateryna says.

Valentyn, Oleksandr's family, and the family of another abductee, Ihor Hryhorenko, united to find their sons. They had known each other long before the full-scale war, and now they shared a great deal of grief.

March-May 2022. The search

Valentyn started looking for the guys as soon as he was released. He walked around the city, asking at enemy checkpoints about his son. He asked among my friends. But to no avail.

When Prykhodko's family learned about the kidnapping, they called the police, the Security Service, and the National Guard – wherever they could.

Soon after, the connection was lost in Nemishayeve, where Sashko's family was, and in Bucha, where Roman's father was. Valentyn tried to continue the search: he walked around the city and asked his friends. However, he did not find even small clues.

"When I was looking for my son, I was convinced that he was right. Russians are monsters who do not spare anyone: there were many burnt and shot-up cars in the city, and bodies lying on the sides of the roads. The hope that my son was alive was fragile," Valentyn says.

After the Armed Forces liberated Kyiv Oblast in early April 2022, the families resumed their search with renewed vigor. They involved friends, volunteers, local authorities, police, the Security Service of Ukraine, and the military.

"We shared information about our guys with everyone, sent their photos, and asked them to let us know if they learned anything," says Kateryna.

But the family's efforts were fruitless. No one has seen Roman and Oleksandr or heard anything about them.

The Prykhodko family believed that their Sasha was in captivity. Shadlovskyi's father was hopeful, but he kept preparing himself for the worst. "They are monsters, dad," he kept repeating his son's words in his head.

After the liberation of Bucha, the French gendarmerie came to the city and identified the bodies. They collected and processed DNA samples from the dead and those looking for their relatives.

"The queue for DNA was huge. We were able to take the test only after three days of waiting. I saw many people I knew in the queue. The atmosphere was depressing: we were taking the test near the morgue, with refrigerated trucks with the bodies of the dead nearby. Everyone was silent. I could not believe that this could happen," Kateryna recalls.

The relatives did not receive clear information on where and when to expect the results. Nor did they receive any news about the results themselves. Later it would turn out that the bodies of Shadlovskyi and Prykhodko were not found among those examined by the gendarmes. But the families were not informed of this.

June 2022. A mass grave

On June 13, 2022, another mass grave was found and excavated in Kyiv Oblast. This time near the village of Myrotske. There were seven men in it.

Each body and its special features were photographed, and DNA materials were taken for examination. The employee of the Bucha morgue who processed the bodies knew Roman Shadlovskyi well, and therefore, when he saw the familiar tattoos on his arms, he immediately called Valentyn.

"I was shown the photo. Although the body was missing half a head, I recognized my son. The tattoos, the clothes... He had an incense stick in his pocket that I had given him once," Valentyn says.

He told the relatives of Oleksandr Prykhodko and Ihor Hryhorenko that they had found guys who resembled their sons. The relatives looked at the photos and descriptions of the bodies. There were some matches, but they are not as sure as Valentyn.

"There was no face, the head was shot through," recalls Prykhodko's stepmother. "The belt was similar, the legs were similar. But we couldn't tell for sure if it was Sasha. Or we didn't want to. We wanted to believe to the last that it was not him."

Next, the relatives faced a big problem – the official identification of the victims. Prior to the identification, the bodies of the victims had no names and surnames, only numbers - 455 and 456.

According to the decision of the Bucha City Council, the bodies found, processed, but unidentified, were buried in the cemetery on Deputatska Street. Each was placed under a separate cross. But instead of names, there were numbers on the plaques.

In order to rebury the body or at least replace the plate, relatives needed to confirm their relationship to the victims. They were told to take DNA samples again and get the results – this time at the Bucha police station. The results were promised in a month. But it took more than a year.

June 2022 - July 2023. Identification of bodies

Roman Shadlovskyi's father remembers this period most vividly, begging at the doorsteps of various institutions in the hope of finally reburying his son.

"When a month passed after the DNA test and there were no results, I went to the police to inquire about the circumstances. I was told to wait another week. I heard the phrase ‘one more week’ many times later," Valentyn says.

He continued to pound the doorsteps of the prosecutor's office and the police, coming there every fortnight. Meanwhile, Easter 2023 (April 16 - ed.) was approaching.

"I was constantly being dismissed, without explanation. My nerves were getting the better of me. I was polite at the beginning, but then I was no longer handling it with kid gloves. I wish it would have helped..... They said: ‘We have a lot of people like you’," Valentyn recalls.

During his next visit to the laboratory, he learned that the criminal case concerning his son had long been in the archive and the investigator simply hadn't picked it up. On that day, in July 2023, the father finally had the DNA results – a 99.9% match.

"If I hadn't been running around and pulling everyone's leg, I probably wouldn't have gotten the results until now. Our criminal cases are lost somewhere, the results are lost, no one cares about us," says the father of the deceased.

The Prykhodko family had a similar situation. However, among other things, they had to submit DNA for the third time. The reason was not explained. Relatives suspect that their data was lost. In August 2023, they finally received the results of the analysis – a 99.9% match.

July-September 2023. Names instead of numbers

Valentyn knew that he would rebury his son on the Alley of Heroes because he was a war veteran.

"After the official identification, I received permission from the city council to rebury Roma. In July, we reburied him properly. There were no problems with this. It is very important for me that my son rests as a hero. Now it's a little easier," Valentyn says.

"Even after the official identification of the body, we still can't believe that Sasha is in that grave," Oleksandr's stepmother says. "In September, we invited a priest, performed a funeral service, replaced the plaque with a personalized one, and had a memorial dinner – all according to church canons. We will keep coming back. Although my heart still does not believe it." 

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According to Ihor Bartkiv, head of the archives department of the Bucha City Council, 78 unidentified people were buried in the central cemetery of Bucha. Currently, 65 remain so. Some were lonesome, and some relatives are still waiting for DNA test results.

This text was prepared by the platform Memorial, which tells the stories of civilians killed by Russia and fallen Ukrainian soldiers. To report data on Ukraine's losses, fill out the forms: for fallen military and civilian victims.

Author: Olha Korotenko