God only knows their names. Why Ukraine still cannot identify some of its fallen defenders

Where the body is taken — and what happens to it next

According to the head of the State Specialized Institution “Kyiv City Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination” Oleksandr Mykhailenko, the logistics of body evacuation are simple: wherever is closer. The dead from the Donetsk axis are usually taken to the bureaus in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, from Kharkiv to the bureaus in Kharkiv Oblast, and so on. In 2022, those killed in Kyiv Oblast were delivered to the Kyiv morgues. But the bodies of Ukrainian service members handed over by Russia are distributed by the Main Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination of the Health Ministry of Ukraine to regional morgues. Fragments of one body may be in different bags, and this greatly complicates the work of identifying it.

And such work is carried out within the framework of a criminal case opened by National Police investigators.

“First, with the participation of a forensic medical expert, we conduct an examination of the body — in particular, to determine its condition, to detect any data that could help in identification. These could be tattoos, signs of surgeries performed, characteristic fractures, etc. We examine the clothing and personal items, if they are present.

Then, criminalists from the police and the bureau of forensic medical examination work with the body, we necessarily take biological material for DNA analysis, and send it to a specialized laboratory. In parallel, we search for information in databases where missing persons are registered, we look for possible relatives. As you can see, to identify a body, we involve significant resources,” says senior investigator of the investigative department of the Main Department of the National Police in Vinnytsia Oblast, Olha Mazur.

Resources and efforts are indeed very large. And if all of them guaranteed success, there would be no nameless burials. So, at a certain stage, something goes wrong.

DNA exists. Why does this not help?

The collection of biomaterial for DNA analysis is now a After the Verkhovna Rada adopted the Law of Ukraine “On the State Registration of Human Genomic Information” in July 2022.mandatory procedure for all service members.

The Law of Ukraine “On State Registration of Human Genomic Information” states that such information (that is, the results of DNA analysis) is entered into the electronic register specifically for the identification of unidentified corpses of people, their remains or parts of their bodies — provided that information about the discovery of such a body is entered into the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations.

That is, while a soldier is alive, their genomic information is not entered into the corresponding electronic register. Therefore, DNA analysis is not conducted on a living soldier.

Instead, another mechanism for identification using DNA analysis is in place. As the Defense Ministry reported, biomaterial (cells from the inner cheek epithelium) is collected from service members for DNA analysis at training centers or in military units. At the same time, a specially authorized person is responsible, in particular, for documenting this procedure — the relevant data is recorded in a journal, and special registration cards are filled out.

The date of material collection and the number of the military unit where it was done are noted in the soldier’s military registration documents and in his personal file. The collected biomaterial is transferred by the military unit for storage to a specialized unit of the Defense Ministry — the Center for Genomic Information Registration.

According to the deputy director of the State Research Forensic Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Ruslan Abbasov, when it comes to identifying the body of a soldier, the investigator makes a request to the military unit that collected the biomaterial from this fighter, and appoints a DNA examination of the material collected in the unit and that collected by forensic experts in the morgue. If the results of these two examinations match, the body can be identified.

But such a scenario is possible only when the investigator has established which military unit the deceased might belong to, analyzed the unit's missing-fighter lists, and determined whose biomaterial from those lists should be sent for DNA analysis.

It helps when there is a uniform, some tattoos, scraps of documents that allow at least to understand, for example, whether the fighter is from the Armed Forces or the National Guard. That is, when there are at least some signs for identification that the investigator, Olha Mazur, spoke about.

What if there is nothing?

The Defense Ministry places certain hopes on the identification of bodies using biometric data. In September 2025, the Cabinet of Ministers approved the Procedure for the corresponding experimental project, coordinated by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The project provides that forensic experts or other employees of the National Police take fingerprints of the deceased’s hands and photograph his face. According to Oleksandr Mykhailenko, if necessary, forensic experts can restore the skin on the deceased’s finger pads to take fingerprints.

The fingerprints are entered into a special electronic database of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and matches are searched for. Similarly, the digital image of the face is uploaded to the biometric data database.

But for living soldiers, taking fingerprints is not mandatory, unlike submitting biomaterial for DNA analysis. Only at will.

And what if the deceased fighter did not leave any antemortem fingerprints? And there is no thread that would allow unraveling the tangle?

12 months and into the ground. Or not

While experts work with the body, it is kept in special rooms of the bureau of forensic medical examination (morgues) or in auto or rail refrigerators under special guard. This is provided for by the Cabinet of Ministers' resolution No. 698. According to it, an unidentified body can be stored for no more than 12 months.

“After this period expires, if the person is not identified, but their genetic profile has been isolated, the bureau of forensic medical examination notifies the local administration about this, which, with the permission of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, organizes the temporary burial of the unidentified body,” explains forensic expert Oleksandr Mykhailenko.

Does the fact of burying the body mean that the work on its identification is completed and the corresponding criminal case is closed?

As senior investigator of the investigative department of the Main Department of the National Police in Vinnytsia Oblast, Olha Mazur explained, the criminal case cannot be closed until the body is identified. Even if it is temporarily buried, the identification work does not stop.

In response to our request, the Ministry of Defense stated that temporary burial “is not a manifestation of indifference, but on the contrary — a manifestation of respect for the deceased and responsibility to their family, since the state does not have the right to allow an erroneous notification about the establishment of identity.”

But let us return to the Cabinet of Ministers’ resolution No. 698. According to Oleksandr Mykhailenko, the requirements for burying the body after 12 months are theoretical, and practice may differ.

“If comparative examinations are still being conducted on this body, then it is not advisable to bury it. By agreement with the investigation and the local administration, we in Kyiv do not hand over bodies for temporary burial. Because the identification of those killed who arrived for examination in 2022 and in 2023 is still ongoing.

We can keep them in refrigerators — we have five, each with a capacity of 100 bodies. But Dnipro, for example, does not have such an opportunity; they currently have 12 refrigerators, but the number of bodies is so large that the local authorities there decided to allocate a land plot for the temporary burial of killed service members,” says the head of the State Specialized Institution “Kyiv City Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination” Oleksandr Mykhailenko.

According to him, to simplify the work of the investigator and experts, it is better to keep unidentified bodies in refrigerators rather than, in the interests of the investigation, conducting exhumations of corpses from temporary burials.

“For example, the DNA analysis does not work. It is necessary to extract a bone fragment again to conduct a repeated analysis. For exhumation, a prosecutor’s order is needed; the investigator and forensic expert must come to the cemetery; and the coffin with the body must be transported to the morgue — a lot of work and involved parties. Therefore, the refrigerator is simpler and faster,” explains Oleksandr Mykhailenko.

He adds that currently, the Health Ministry is working out options for creating locations where unidentified bodies of service members can be stored longer than 12 months.

“It is sad to say, but our enemy, the aggressor state, by the way, has such a location. After the Chechen campaigns, the examination of bodies of those killed in Chechnya is conducted in Rostov-on-Don, in a special center of forensic medicine of the Russian Defense Ministry. All the dead were brought there — known and unknown. Examinations and identification are still being conducted, without temporary burials. All bodies, all information, and specialists are concentrated in one place.

But our approach, as we see, is a bit different. In our country, when Russian aggression began in 2014, the work with service members was assigned to local bureaus of forensic medical examination. But now the scale of this work is simply incomparable to the situation in 2014. Relatives ask why the examinations take so long. And do relatives know about the shortage of forensic experts in the bureaus? The shortage of laboratory workers? And the workload on each employee?

For example, in our Kyiv City Bureau, given our workload, there should be 40–45 forensic experts working. But only 19 are working. Each expert should have a laboratory assistant, but we have only four. In general, the situation is the same in every bureau,” notes Oleksandr Mykhailenko.

What needs to change — and why hasn't it changed yet?

During our conversation, Mykhailenko constantly emphasized that the work on identifying bodies would be more prompt if experts had more “peaceful” information about the deceased service member.

“It is already obvious that simply taking biomaterial from a service member for DNA analysis is not enough. It is necessary to do an orthopantomogram for each, that is, an X-ray of the jaws, maxillary sinuses, and all teeth. And to take fingerprints. All this needs to be done in the military unit, and the information stored in some single database for military personnel, as is done in the United States.

For example, the Azov regiment is currently creating a dental office where orthopantomograms will be made for their fighters. Such information will greatly facilitate the work of forensic experts,” notes Oleksandr Mykhailenko.

The Ministry of Defense acknowledges that for every fallen warrior to be identified, an integral state system of continuous recording, storage, verification and re-checking of identification data is necessary. And in the 13th year of Russian aggression, we still do not have such a system.

The Defense Ministry also talks about the need to collect fingerprint data, dental information, information about surgeries undergone, implants, individual anatomical features, etc. International identification standards indicate that the most reliable result is achieved by combining information about the antemortem condition of the body with pathological-anatomical studies.

The department acknowledges that there is a need to develop and scale the relevant infrastructure involved in identification — laboratories, automated data accounting systems, state registers — to improve the mechanism of information exchange between all structures involved in body identification. That is, “peacetime” capacities cannot withstand the loads of the fifth year of the full-scale war.

“Critically important is the proper collection, marking, documentation and preservation of bodies, remains and biological samples. If every fragment, every discovery site, every accompanying item and every selected sample are recorded according to a single standard, this makes it possible to return to the materials again even a significant time after burial. It is the continuous ‘chain of custody of evidence’ that is one of the basic conditions for future identification,” the Defense Ministry’s response to our request states.

The department says it is also necessary to improve work with families of missing persons — after all, it is they who must promptly file a statement with the police that their relative is missing, submit biomaterial for DNA analysis, provide experts with the soldier’s medical documents, up to X-ray images in particular. Unfortunately, even now relatives often do not know the necessary algorithm of actions and do not use the Unified State Information Platform on persons missing under special circumstances.

A number instead of a name: how the state tracks the unidentified

In August of last year, seven unidentified bodies of Ukrainian service members were brought to the village of Mali Krushlyntsi in Vinnytsia Oblast for temporary burial.

“These bodies had been in the regional bureau of forensic medical examination for 12 months; no matches were found for their DNA. The burial was organized jointly by the Vinnytsia Oblast Military Administration, local self-government bodies, and the Territorial Recruitment Center. The burial took place solemnly — with the state flags of Ukraine on the coffins, the performance of the State Anthem of Ukraine, and a military salute,” the press secretary of the Main Department of the National Police in Vinnytsia Oblast, Zarina Maievska, told hromadske.

The logistics were simple: bodies from the Vinnytsia bureau were buried in the village of the Vinnytsia city community. That is, we can say that since the beginning of the large-scale war, unidentified bodies from various regional bureaus have been buried by the corresponding local communities — in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Mykolaiv Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, etc.

However, after the National Military Memorial Cemetery was officially opened on August 29, 2025, in Markhalivka in Kyiv Oblast, unidentified bodies of service members from all bureaus of forensic medical examination in Ukraine are taken there. This is provided for by the Cabinet of Ministers' resolution No. 1466, adopted in December 2024.

According to the director of the National Military Memorial Cemetery, Yaroslav Proniutkin, currently about 200 unidentified service members from the period of the full-scale war are buried at the memorial cemetery.

“According to the government resolution, there is a separate contract for the organization and conduct of free burial for each such body, which the Memorial, as a state institution, concludes with the regional state administrations,” explains Yaroslav Proniutkin.

So, someone once brought the deceased's body to a certain morgue. From there, someone once transports it to Markhalivka. And until August of last year — to the cemeteries of local settlements. Somewhere in the registers, they search for DNA matches, fingerprints, and photos of the unidentified deceased.

It turns out that a lot of services take care of an unidentified body. How then, over time, to track the transportation route of a specific body? Where and how is information recorded about where this body was brought to the cemetery from, where and when biomaterial was taken from it for DNA analysis, and in which region the investigator and experts are handling its identification?

The Law of Ukraine “On Burial and Funeral Affairs” provides that in the Kept by the relevant municipal utilities or local government agencies.burial registration book, separately for each year, the number of the plot, sector, and grave where the unidentified body is buried, the date of burial, and data on the document certifying death are noted. And instead of the surname and name of the buried person, a special number should appear.

In the Cabinet of Ministers’ resolution No. 1466, it is indicated that this number is assigned to bodies or remains in accordance with the order of the Health Ministry of March 8, 2022. It refers to a unique code consisting of letters and numbers, which includes the letter code of the region where the body was found, the number of the search group, and the serial number of the deceased’s body found by it. Tags with this number are attached to the body itself and to the bag in which it is transported, and are also used to mark the bag containing the belongings of the deceased. With this code, the unidentified body arrives at the morgue.

However, according to Oleksandr Mykhailenko, on the grave of an unidentified service member, they note not the code from the searchers, as written in the government resolution. Until 2025, they wrote a/z and four digits — the number from the civil registry office’s act of death registration. Now, on the graves, they write a 17-digit code assigned to the body by the bureau of forensic medical examination. It contains information about the date when the body was delivered to the bureau, the number of the bureau itself, and the number of the body in the corresponding morgue (department of forensic medical examination of corpses).

“With this number, one can establish, in particular, in which bureau biomaterial was taken from the body for DNA analysis; this number appears in the investigation materials, etc., that is, it helps in identifying the body. The number is written by bureau employees, and it is clear that there may be purely mechanical errors, for example, instead of five zeros someone will write six, but this cannot affect the possibility of identifying the body,” says Oleksandr Mykhailenko.

How long will the temporary period last?

As the Defense Ministry told us, the decision on the temporary burial of the body is made by the National Police.

“The burials of unidentified bodies of service members are called temporary because, when the body is identified, the relatives can either rebury it at their own discretion or leave it in the same grave, indicating the full name of the deceased, the dates of his life and death on it. That is, the burial is temporary only for the time while the body’s identification is being conducted,” the press secretary of the Vinnytsia regional police, Zarina Maievska, told hromadske.

Neither investigators nor forensic experts can say how long the identification of a body can take.

In June 2024, the director of the State Research Forensic Center, Serhiy Krymchuk, reported that during the full-scale war (and up to June 2024 — ed.) 12,041 reference samples of unidentified bodies had been added to the electronic DNA register. And 48,964 families of missing persons had submitted DNA profiles.

The Commissioner for Persons Missing Under Special Circumstances, Artur Dobroserdov, recently said that 92,000 cases of missing persons are currently under investigation in Ukraine. The official did not specify how many of them might be unidentified killed service members.

We asked the Defense Ministry how many service members from 2014 to 2022, and from the beginning of the full-scale war to today, were buried as unidentified. The military department replied that such data is not made public.

“From my observations regarding the killed defenders of Kyiv in 2022, for every 100 identified bodies, there were approximately up to 25 unidentified,” says forensic expert Mykhailenko.

Biomaterial for DNA analysis from service members began to be collected only in the summer of 2022. That is, fighters who died from 2014 until that time did not submit their biomaterial. How many of them remain unidentified? Many temporary burials of the dead remained in the now-occupied territories. When will the time come for the identification of these bodies?

“Right now, it is just beginning. It is necessary to prepare special groups that will deal with the identification of those killed in this war over the years. It is clear that bodies from the occupied territories will be in poor condition, putrefied, especially if the remains have to be lifted from mines and quarries of Donbas. Most likely, it will be necessary to work with bone objects, take material from them for DNA analysis, and compare it with the DNA of relatives. We need to prepare for the fact that this will be a very long process,” says Oleksandr Mykhailenko.

Information regarding unidentified corpses, in accordance with the Law of Ukraine “On State Registration of Human Genomic Information,” is stored for 50 years. That is, those killed service members who are not identified in time will lie in graves under a number. And it is unlikely that their identification will be aided by the burial registration book, which, after the cemetery's liquidation, must be stored in archives for 75 years or more.

Finally, I voice the question that personally bothers me a lot: could they also be burying bodies of Russians in the temporary graves — with a salute and the anthem of Ukraine?

If we believe the Cabinet of Ministers' resolution No. 1466, this is ruled out. After all, among the documents that local state administrations transfer to the director of the Memorial in Markhalivka, there must be a letter from the commissioner for persons missing under special circumstances. And in it, information from the Unified Register of Persons Missing Under Special Circumstances regarding the absence of a mark about the probability that this body belongs to Russians.