In a central Ukrainian city, families fight to reclaim dignity for their fallen soldiers
KROPYVNYTSKYI, Ukraine — Local authorities promised to bury every fallen defender at public expense, yet the mourners who trailed a cortege of three soldiers through town witnessed indignities money had not fixed: officials misread the names during the farewell, and the coffins were loaded into a dented 1990s city bus. Widows and mothers were left convinced that the state’s help fell short. Relatives and friends have since pressed the authorities to take action, staging the city’s first public funeral procession and demanding lasting ways to honor those killed at the front. Their campaign shows a society determined to commemorate its dead on its own terms and to change how Ukraine says goodbye to its defenders.
“I would have buried my husband in a completely different way”
Thirty‑one‑year‑old Oleksiy “Kavkazets” Voloshko, a veteran of the 3rd Special Operations Forces Regiment, was killed near Avdiivka on Jan. 21, 2024. His widow, Maryna, learned only en route to the cemetery that her husband would be buried beside two other soldiers.
“The process was disorganized. We weren’t warned that he would be buried with two other guys. When we were driving to the funeral with the children, we didn’t even know that a bus with the bodies was behind us,” she recalls. “A speech was given for each person. I stood there crying, looking at the coffin in which, as they read out, my husband was being carried … And then it turned out the names had been read out incorrectly and Oleksiy had been confused with another soldier.”
Inside the coffin, she says, “the bodies were not dressed, their clothes were just lying on top of them,” and protruding nails were visible. “If I could turn back time, I would have buried my husband in a completely different way.”
The family received 30,000 hryvnias ($727) from the city council, 30,000 from the regional council and another 50,000 ($1,212) for a monument; Maryna also gets 6,000 hryvnias ($145) each month for their two daughters. More than a year after Oleksiy’s burial, the contractor still has not laid concrete walkways between several rows of graves.
The work on our grave will be completed in a few years.
Parents transported the body themselves
The indignities that haunt Marina were intolerable to Alla Rusachenko. Her 25‑year‑old son, Oleksiy “Fritz” Nazarchuk, a platoon commander in the 5th Assault Brigade, died when a Russian Lancet drone struck his vehicle near Chasiv Yar on Oct. 9, 2024.
Instead of waiting for the state’s On the Shield transport program (Editor’s note: Ukraine’s state service that brings soldiers’ remains home from the front.), Rusachenko and a family friend retrieved the body themselves in a refrigerated van. “I was lucky that I got to see my child,” she says.
The city and region again paid 60,000 hryvnias in aid and 50,000 for a headstone, but the parents hosted a three‑round memorial dinner for 80 comrades and football ultras.
“We didn’t pay anything for the funeral itself, everything was organized,” Rusachenko says. She and her son had agreed on cremation: half his ashes scattered over Kholodnyi Yar, the other half interred “so we would have a place to visit … and we each kept a small portion in capsules.”
At the memorial complex they later erected an obelisk for 147,000 hryvnias, the sculptor working free of charge.
The first motorcade
Nazarchuk’s friends wanted more: a public farewell that would also help Kropyvnytskyi confront the reality of the war. Officials had long rejected motorcades, but activist Mykhailo Salenko pressed the military registration office:
“He said they would not organize anything for one deceased person. I told him, ‘You will organize it for one person and for those who will follow. This needs to be done constantly, not hidden away so that no one can see,’” Salenko said.
Then officials hesitated to approve the motorcade, the family took matters into their own hands — publicly announcing the route and schedule so the procession would go forward no matter what. At 9 a.m. on October 15, 2024, traffic stopped in the city’s main square for a nationwide minute of silence, as loudspeakers played the Ukrainian Nationalist Prayer (Editor’s note: A wartime prayer that dates to Ukraine’s 20th‑century independence movement) “A few months after Oleksiy’s funeral,” says Rusachenko, “funeral processions became a regular sight in the city.”
An alley that still isn’t there
Today a temporary Alley of Heroes — fading portraits on wobbling metal stands — marks Kropyvnytskyi’s central square. On June 3, 2025, relatives, activists and officials gathered to debate a permanent memorial. Deputy Olha Kovaleva‑Alokili noted that in other cities “you walk through a lively city, and suddenly there is silence and portraits … so that people understand the scale of the war.”
Salenko was blunter:
“I don’t care what the city council says, a permanent memorial must be built. They have money to build parks, bus stops, pave streets … If we have to burn tires in front of the city council to get this done, I will burn them.”
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The temporary Alley of Heroes on Maidan Heroes Square. Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine, June 3, 2025. Oleksandra Rakhimova / Frontliner
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A site or design project has yet to be approved, but discussions continue. During a June 3 meeting at City Hall, grandfather Hryhorii Savchenko pleaded, “We need this committee … It will take years, but we will move forward.” The discussion ended only when a bomb threat emptied the building.
“The cost of burial is not only about money”
Still, from graveside mix-ups to an old city bus and long delays for headstones—with a memorial still only on paper, families in Kropyvnytskyi describe the process as mired in confusion and bureaucracy.
“I cried because Oleksiy died and because of the terrible organization. It was unpleasant. I am still offended,” Maryna Voloshko says.
For Rusachenko, the crematorium staff who smoked and wept beside her son’s body showed more humanity than most officials she met.
What both women — and Salenko — want is straightforward: a city that grants its fallen the dignity they earned on the front line and spares families one more bureaucratic fight. It is a modest plea, yet one now echoing far beyond Kropyvnytskyi as communities across Ukraine look for their own ways to honor the dead.
Text : Albina Karman (adapted by Jared Goyette)
Photos: Oleksandra Rakhimova
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