‘I buried my husband, but not all of him’: A Ukrainian family’s long wait after a soldier’s death

Maksym Nykytenko, a 43-year-old anti-aircraft rifleman with Ukraine’s 115th Separate Mechanized Brigade, had been killed near Nova Kruhliakivka in Kharkiv Oblast. A Russian FPV drone struck as his unit was evacuating wounded soldiers during a rotation.

Most of his body would remain on the road for eight days before four fellow soldiers could retrieve it. Another part of his remains had been blown into the vehicle.

More than a year later, Viktoriia is still waiting to bury it.

Fourteen kilometers in the dark

Viktoriia first learned something had happened when her mother-in-law called to say representatives from the local military recruitment center had come to see her.

“I laughed and asked whether they had made a mistake. Why would they be coming to me?” she recalled.

Then came the words: “Viktoriia, we need to talk.”

Maksym, an anti-aircraft rifleman with Ukraine’s 115th Separate Mechanized Brigade, had been reported missing in action near the village of Nova Kruhliakivka in Kharkiv Oblast.

“Our family considered only one possibility - that he had been captured,” Viktoriia said.

The next day, however, Maksym’s squad commander contacted her to offer his condolences and ask what should be done with his belongings and his car. In a private conversation, he confirmed what had happened.

“Yes, Keks is dead,” he told her, using Maksym’s call sign. “It happened right in front of us.”

The soldiers had been due to rotate out the following morning, but were ordered to leave early to evacuate wounded troops from a nearby position. Russian drones attacked them there, forcing the soldiers to scatter and abandon their pickup truck with its engine still running.

When the explosions subsided, they tried to get back into the vehicle. Another FPV drone struck.

Maksym was running last.

“He was 43, wearing body armor - he couldn’t run like a young guy,” Viktoriia said. “He shielded his fellow soldiers, and he took the full force of the blast. The pickup drove away, everyone else survived, and my husband’s body was left on the road.”

Part of Maksym’s remains had been blown into the vehicle.

His fellow soldiers kept the body under observation with a drone, looking for a chance to retrieve it. But Russian forces were also watching the area, Viktoriia said, with drones waiting to target anyone who approached.

The opportunity came eight days later.

“We’ll go for him at night. It’s 14 kilometers. We’ll slip through like mice because there’s no way to get there by vehicle,” the commander told her.

Four of Maksym’s fellow soldiers made the journey. The next day, his body was in a morgue.

“I am so grateful to them,” Viktoriia said.

Two sets of remains, two investigations

Maksym’s body had lain on the road for eight days in the summer heat. Under Ukrainian procedures, visual identification is generally possible only within four days of death. After that, DNA testing is required to formally establish a person’s identity.

Viktoriia had little doubt it was her husband. From descriptions and photographs, she recognized the scar on his chin, his teeth, wedding ring, knife, silver trident necklace, blood-type patch and phone. His fellow soldiers, who had retrieved the body themselves, were also certain.

But formal identification still had to follow its course.

The situation was further complicated because Maksym’s body and the remains blown into the pickup were treated as separate cases. Two criminal investigations were opened and assigned to two different investigators: one in Viktoriia’s hometown of Snovsk, who had initially handled Maksym’s disappearance and later his death, and another in Dnipro, responsible for the separate remains.

Maksym’s daughter and mother provided DNA samples in Chernihiv Oblast. Viktoriia, meanwhile, traveled east.

She was told the DNA results could take a long time. Ukrainian morgues were overwhelmed, she said, after more than 1,000 bodies of fallen Ukrainians had recently been repatriated from Russia.

“I realized I might not be able to bury my husband for another year or two,” Viktoriia said. “They told me the morgues were full and they physically couldn’t keep up. Wait, wait, wait.”

Her family was already living through another such wait. Viktoriia said her cousin, who had died in Russian captivity, was believed to have been among the repatriated bodies. His family was still awaiting DNA identification.

Viktoriia began looking for another way to bring Maksym home.

A serviceman in Maksym’s unit who worked with the families of fallen soldiers began making calls on her behalf and eventually secured permission for her to identify the body at a morgue in Dnipro.

“They showed me photographs, and I confirmed it was my husband, even though his face was burned,” she said.

A forensic expert issued an identification report, which was sent to the investigator. Viktoriia then received official notification of Maksym’s death.

She brought him home and buried him in Snovsk.

But not all of him.

Viktoriia still did not know where the other remains were being kept, exactly what part of Maksym’s body they contained, or what would happen next.

The war reaches the cemetery

Nearly a year after Maksym’s death, the war found Viktoriia again.

In late May, she went to the cemetery in Snovsk to tend to her husband’s grave. While she was there, a drone was shot down overhead.

Falling debris broke her arm. Viktoriia survived.

More than a dozen graves of Ukrainian soldiers were damaged by the debris. Maksym’s grave was left intact.

By coincidence, the local investigator assigned to Viktoriia’s injury was the same officer who had handled the case of her missing and later deceased husband.

By then, a year after Maksym’s death, the investigator had received the DNA results for the remains recovered separately from his body.

They belonged to Maksym.

But Viktoriia was told they still could not be returned to her. The DNA profile from the remains first had to be compared with the sample taken from Maksym’s body.

“I want them returned to me - whole or cremated - so I can bury them here at the cemetery,” Viktoriia said. “If they didn’t take a DNA sample from his body and an exhumation is required, I don’t want that.”

Hromadske asked the National Police of Ukraine to explain how remains are identified and reunited with a body that has already been buried.

Police said that once it is conclusively established that separate remains belong to the same person, they can be released to the family for burial. Additional procedures involving an already buried body, including exhumation, are not automatically required and are decided on a case-by-case basis.

Anastasiia Ostapenko, the investigator in Dnipro handling the case of the separately recovered remains, later contacted Viktoriia. She told hromadske that a DNA sample had been taken from Maksym’s body immediately after it arrived at the morgue.

Testing had also confirmed that the other remains belonged to Maksym, Ostapenko said. The two DNA profiles must now be compared to formally establish the match. The results are expected in mid-October.

If the match is confirmed, the remains will finally be released to Maksym’s family.

“They will be returned in the condition in which they were found on the battlefield,” Ostapenko said, adding that Maksym’s military unit would transport them home.

The unit said the remains would be brought back “on the shield” - a Ukrainian expression for bringing home a fallen soldier with military honors.

Maksym’s fellow soldiers will be there when Viktoriia buries the last part of her husband.

“He is ours,” the unit said.