The regular exhumation of a body of a hero was held last Monday on the cemetery of Starobelsk, where earlier were buried soldiers of «Aydar» and 80th airmobile brigade. The personality of soldier was established as a result of DNA testing. Nearly 50 people, activists, journalists and simply concerned citizens came to pay tribute to Victor Kumetsky, the soldier from city Lutsk and to support his family, which had come to take a body.
However, any of representatives of local authority weren’t present on the exhumation and it was payed by funds of volunteers. Informator.lg.ua communicated with activists and military and tried to found out why local leadership cancelled itself from this process. What problems do relatives of dead soldiers face with in the process of identification and reburial of them.
The identification and reburial of bodies of dead soldiers of ATO is the problem, which covered in the national media only sporadically.
The sad geography of burials of unnamed heroes covers not only “brebel” Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Unidentified remains of warriors, given their lives for territorial integrity of our country, buried also in Zaporozhie and Dnepropetrovsk. The numbers of statistic are volatile: from one side the personality of dead is identified through the analysis of DNA, from another while war doesn’t over the number of dead can be increased.
According to data of humanitarian mission “Black tulip”, realizing searching of Ukrainian military, died during a war on the East of Ukraine, from 300 to 1500 Ukrainian warriors are counted as missing. During the time of its work on the East of Ukraine this organization could detect and identified the remains of more than 600 military.
The cemetery of unknown heroes has already appeared on September 2014 in Starobelsk town.
As it was reported earlier by Informator.lg.ua the remains of soldiers of 80th separate airmobile brigade, died during battles in Schastie on September 5 were buried in this town. After the identifying of personalities of some of soldiers their relatives could take their bodies back. According to report of local activist and volunteer Vladimir Vinnik to Informator.lg.ua the procedure of exhumation and reburial is difficult enough and it followed by serious bureaucratic «delays».
First of all, criminal proceedings are opened on the fact of death of every soldier by prosecutor. Then, based on the results of examinations of DNA, in a case of coincidence, investigator makes a decision about recognition of burial under the under this or any other number belonging to a specific soldier. After that relatives get the certificate about death and make a decision to leave soldier on a place of burial or to take him for reburial in the native region.
“After the identification of personality of dead and s the certificate of death is at the hands of relatives, they must to appeal in Starobelsk Utility “Blagoustriy”, which services town’s graveyard. According to price-list of this enterprise, controlled by city council, the procedure of exhumation costs 413 UAH. This money is payed by activists or us, volunteers — Vladimir Vinnik tells — City authority removed itself from the beginning from everything that is connected with burial of soldiers on the municipal cemetery. Fourteen burial has been on Monday. As usual there were no representatives of city or district on the exhumation. I paid money to “Blagoustriy”.
Vladimir adds that a lot of times he discussed this questions with representatives of local authority, trying to convince them, that it’s immorally to take money from relatives of military for reburial. Including fact that he had straight talk on this topic with Starobelsk City Head Aleksander Goncharov. “Mayor explained me, that city council can’t, for example, finance the exhumation, because they don’t have the appropriate expenditure. I think that it is excuses, because city authority has the reserved fund and 413 UAH is not a big sum in citywide. The business is not in this money, but in respect and attention of local authority to families of those people, who had given their lives for Ukraine. Also, inability to pay for exhumation from city budget doesn’t explain absence of representatives of power on reburials.
Starobelsk City Head Aleksander Goncharov
The good example for Starobelsk authority can become Lutsk City Council, which took on itself all hardships on transportation and reburial of Victor Kumetsky, exhumed this Monday. “I have a copy of decision of Lutsk City Council about reburial of remains this soldier on the “Walk of Fame” of city cemetery of Lutsk” — concludes Vladimir Vinnik.
“The authority of Starobelsk District State Administration doesn’t pay proper attention to the problem of reburial of Ukrainian soldiers. representatives of local authority dismissive from problems, connected with dead military. While here (in Starobelsk — ed.) was “Aydar”, guys from batallion were doing matters of exhumations, helped to relatives to organize the transportation of reminds of military for reburial. For today, local authority hasn’t pay proper attention to this question yet. That’s why local activists and volunteers help to reburial military. They forced to take related costs on themselves” — Starobelsk public activist, soldier of batallion “Aydar” in the past Victor Malakhov tells about this problem. According to his words, disregard for the people, given their lives for territorial integrity of Ukraine and stopped the spreading of separatist zymosis in the region, is the hallmark of the current leadership of Starobelsk District State Administration. It’s skeleton is still formed from members of ex-Party of regions. “People, who lost their relatives, are already very hard psychologically. Volunteers and activists take all this costs on themselves, because they rightly seem it blasphemous, that relatives of people, given their lives on the war, forced to pay money for their reburial” — he concludes. However, representatives of city and district authority seem such state of affairs normal and civilized.
Ex-soldier of batallion “Aydar” Eugeniy Nikishin tells that problems with identification, exhumation and reburial, which had appeared first time on summer of last year, solve unsystematically. “This process is happened by principle “a little bit from everyone”. Ministry of Defense helps a little (or a lot), activists and volunteers too, for example “Black Tulip”. A big number of problems haven’t been solved yet on a state level for today, after more than a year after the beginning of war on Donbass.:
“In law, the results of DNA testing are necessary to identify the body of dead. Relatives have a lot of problems with getting the certificate of death without them. For example, one of our soldiers died in front of friends under the armoured personnel carrier. Fuel spilled on his body and it burned to such an extent that there was no possibility to take samples for DNA testing. In spite of a fact that all this situation was seen by our soldiers, the father of dead sought to obtain for a few long months a certificate of death, while his dead son was listing as missing. A lot of difficulties always appeared with transportation of bodies of dead from uncontrolled territory. Volunteers establish contacts with representatives of the other side for this. Generally, we can say that efforts are insufficient from the side of the to solve this problems” — Eugeniy concludes.
Aleksei Chernov for Informator.lg.ua