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When Serhiy Sova’s frame was removed from a tomb in Izium, her doll was dressed in a bracelet in the colors of Ukraine, donated through her children. The symbol pierced the nation.
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By Marc Santora and Anna Lukinova
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The frame pulled from a well in Izium in a state of poor decomposition, with skin shed from bone and discolored. But one thing stood out: the blue and yellow bracelet around the dead man’s wrist.
The colors of the Ukrainian national flag had faded slightly.
The body, one of many exhumed after Ukraine recaptured Izium from Russians this month, is another reminder of the savage toll of war casualties. But the bracelet conveyed something different: courage and individuality amid a dark image of mass death. And it seemed to send an almost provocative message: Ukraine lives, even if some of its other peoples don’t.
The symbol temporarily captured the nation’s imagination.
It was widely shared on Facebook and the Telegram messaging app. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wore a similar armband on his wrist when addressing the United Nations Security Council on Thursday as evidence of Russian atrocities.
“I wear one too,” he said, referring to the bracelet. “And Russia knows one thing,” Mr. Kuleba. He can never kill us all. “
When Oksana Sova saw the picture, she saw something else. The bracelet resembled the one her children gave her husband, Serhiy, in 2014, when he first went to fight in Ukraine. He looked at the whole picture of the corpse, studied the tattoos, and I knew in an instant it was him.
“Serhiy’s most recent tattoo is a samurai with a sakura branch on top of him,” he said in a phone interview Thursday as he headed to retrieve his remains. “The samurai is a warrior who goes all the way. And sakura is a symbol of hope and recovery.
Her husband, she said, had the spirit of a samurai.
On Friday, Sova buried her husband, this time with a full funeral in Nikopol, southern Ukraine.
Serhiy is one of 338 bodies discovered Friday in the Izium mass grave, according to the Kharkiv prosecutor’s office. They come with 320 civilians and 18 military as Serhiy. northeast who defeated Russian forces.
Oleksander Filchakov, the chief prosecutor of the Kharkiv region, said Thursday there were 445 graves in the cemetery where Serhiy exhumed. In some graves, he said other people were buried 4 at a time. They are injured by mines and explosions.
“There are symptoms of torture,” he said.
He said he expected exhumations at the site to end Friday, but that investigators would then move on to other burial sites they have in the city.
For months, Ms. Sova thought she would be one of many Ukrainians wondering what had happened to a loved one, suspecting her husband had died but never sure.
The last time she spoke to him, he said, was the morning of April 19.
Serhiy, 36, had described to him how Russian planes bombed his position on the outskirts of Izium. Russian artillery hit them with all instructions and Russian tanks approached. He said they were armed and that six of his fellow infantrymen were “two hundred,” army jargon meaning killed.
They were ordered to wait and he told her he would comply with the order. The line stopped.
About a week later, he asked the army command for data and gave them a DNA sample. He said his frame had not been discovered in the last known position of his unit and had been officially declared missing.
Every day for five months, he said, he searched for photographs of morgues. He left out the hope that he would be taken prisoner; After all, others had been captured and survived, he thought. Why not Serhiy?
The couple married 15 years ago and she still calls him her soulmate. He trained as a cynologist, dog breeder and teacher, and they created a small business out of his love of canids.
They had two children: Marat, 14, and Elina, 9.
In 2014, after Russia fomented a war in eastern Ukraine, it mobilized to fight Russian-backed separatists and joined the separate 93rd Mechanized Brigade, known as “Kholodny Yar. “
Marat had just entered first grade and her daughter was only one year old. As he walked to the front, he was handed the armband with the colors of the national flag, his wife said.
He never took it away. He used it when he fought in battles in Pisky and outdoors at Donetsk airport. After a year, he demobilized and returned to civilian life. But he was still wearing the bracelet.
On the eve of the Russian invasion, like so many other former soldiers, Serhiy re-enlisted and began the education of a combat doctor. But when the war came, they took him to the front to protect the border region in the northeastern province of Kharkiv. .
“You know, he’s been so persistent,” his father, Oleksandr Sova, 60, said in an interview. “Several times I tried to dissuade him from doing military service,” but to no avail. Then I had to settle for his choice. “
He spoke to his son in April, when Serhiy asked him to take care of the house, his wife and children.
“I would do it anyway, but why would I ask?” he said. “I had such a strong hunch. And after that, the connection was lost. “
Mykhaylo Onufrienko, a fellow soldier who had known Serhiy since 2003, joined the circle of relatives in his search after he disappeared. They combed Russian social media for photographs of captured or killed Ukrainian foot soldiers.
“I saw pictures of his passport and identity documents of his comrades,” Mr. Onufrenko said, “I think they took him prisoner,” he said. head. They definitely interrogated and tortured him, I’m sure he never said what they wanted to hear. So they killed him.
Serhiy’s wife also believes she captured and tortured him.
The coroner’s report states that Serhiy died from a gunshot wound, but the pathologist may not imply the time of death. The circle of relatives does not know for sure whether he died on the battlefield or was taken prisoner and killed.
But he found.
His former colleagues, army comrades and citizens visited his grave on Friday afternoon. Despite heavy shelling overnight and early morning near Nikopol, many other people came here to see Serhiy’s burial, his wife said.
“It was complicated for all of us, but we all stood firm, as Serhiy did with his life,” he said.
The bracelet, however, was not buried with him. He remained in Izium, evidence in the thief’s investigation into his death.
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