By Andrew Harding, BBC News, Slovyansk, Ukraine
Funeral of Denis Sosnenko, who died while volunteering to collect bodies from battlefields
With the faint sound of shells firing south and east from the front lines, people knelt in front of the slowly passing vans and threw roses. When the car stopped and the back door opened to reveal a wooden coffin, sobbing began.
Lyudmila Sosnenko hugged her daughter and exclaimed: “My son! Why?”
The town in northern Donbass has seen a number of unexpected funerals in recent months. But the host of this funeral was neither a soldier nor just a civilian.
Former Ukrainian kickboxing champion Denis Sosnenko, 21, volunteered last year for the charity Black Tulip to recover bodies. The task is to collect the bodies of civilians and soldiers who died in war, and the target audience includes not only Ukrainians but also Russians.
(From left) Denis Sosnenko’s father Eduardo, sister Natalia and mother Lyudmila
Sosnenko died last week following the van he was driving to collect the bodies struck an anti-tank mine near the front lines.
“Dennis, you have a lot of angels on your shoulders today, the angels you brought home,” said Alexei Yukov, Black Tulip’s regional director.
“Thanks to your work, many soldiers who died in places no one would go to find them were reunited with their families.”
“My son always said, ‘This is my mission, I have to do it,'” Lyudmila said. made me feel at ease,” he said.
“He was always happy and had big plans for the post-war period.”
People around Sosnenko’s coffin
When interviewed by the BBC, Sosnenko described how terrifying the job was. About picking up the dismembered body parts one by one and the dangers that always come with it. On not only the war itself raging around us, but also the explosives that the withdrawing Russian troops seem to have planted under the bodies. Black Tulip used drones to detect these explosives.
But Sosnenko and her colleagues were enthusiastic regarding the importance of the work.
Many of the bodies of Russian soldiers that Black Tulip has recovered over the last 11 months will be exchanged for those of Ukrainian soldiers who have crossed the front lines and gone missing.
At the time of the interview, Artur Semeiko, who worked with Sosnenko, said, “I feel God’s grace when I think that the corpse can finally return from the war.” It would provide reassurance to those who failed to properly hold the funerals of their missing relatives.
Sosnenko’s associates said she had to return to work immediately
“Nothing will change,” Semeiko said at a snow-covered cemetery outside Slovyansk following Sosnenko’s funeral.
“I’m glad I was able to bury (Sosnenko) with honors. I’ve accomplished so much in such a short life. But we have to keep working to bring more people home.”
“I’m going to get back to work as soon as possible,” Yukov also nodded.
“I’m going back, even if it costs my life. I realized that with the war going on and so many young people dying, there was no time to mourn. They, too, had to go home.”
