Biweekly, Olena Zhuravlova Visit the Luchakiv cemetery Lviv. There her husband Oleksii is buried. He was one of the first to enlist in the military. Russia It launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He was 46 years old and had little military experience. He was killed by a mortar shell two months after arriving at the front. Olena was notified by phone. “They just called me and said they had found his body, so they needed photos of him to identify him. That’s it,” he says in an interview, his gaze lost in space.
In Olena’s case, a Ukraine hit someone war lasting a year, of course, is not unique. Doctor Tetiana Kisil He is 28 years old and has an unfinished house. Vasil, her husband died in Kherson and orphaned five-year-old Verónica. Now Tetiana barely has a few left memories of her husband and a plaque commemorating the neighbors put in the school in his town, radelychiA quiet town in western Ukraine, 60 kilometers from Lviv.
“He called us one day and said they wouldn’t be insured for a few days, so we waited. But days passed and we got no news until he finally contacted us to inform us that he was dead,” he said. voluntarily signed up It began last year after the invasion launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
touched the demographic
This Ukrainian demographics creating daily personal dramas but also a great social impact. fight every day dozens of men are leaving, never to return and their families’ lives are changed forever. “It was impossible to think about stopping him and not letting him go to war. She said she was leaving so we wouldn’t have a son,” says Zhuravlova.
There are currently only a few preliminary studies of how the Ukrainian demographic has transformed in the aftermath of the conflict. However, the scenario they describe is rather pessimistic. For example, a recent analysis conducted by the University of St Andrews with European funding concluded that: Ukraine’s population may fall by 33 percent for the next twenty years millions of displaced And tens of thousands dead Who is leaving the war?
Actually, thousands of Ukrainian soldiers died since the beginning of the war, but the Ukrainian government does not give exact figures exact number of casualties and it just reports Deaths of Russian fighters, it is also impossible to create contrast. However, in this war year, the magnitude of the phenomenon led to the emergence of various voluntary associations in the country that helped the families of the martyrs.
unidentified
This is the case of Bohdana Sirkiv, who also has front-line relatives and heads one of the groups. associations supporting the widows and children of warriors Ukrainians were killed in the war. He explains that the lack of data is due to the Ukrainian government’s unwillingness to upset the public, but that they are still aware of some issues affecting families.
“One of the main challenges is lost warriorswho unidentified or we don’t know where their bodies are,” explains Sirkiv. “One of the reasons is that we have Big problem with body swapping (deceased soldier). Since February 24, 2022, we have been able to save almost none of them. Territories occupied by Russia”, he claims. This is the reason why some families have not yet reunited with their loved ones or it has taken months for them to be reunited.
On the contrary, according to Sirkiv, families currently have large economic difficulties for the generous compensation their decedents received after their death. “The only obstacle here is bureaucracy, which sometimes slows the process down a bit. However, there are many support groups for family members,” argues Sirkiv.
a separate issue, dead civilians. According to data updated this week by the United Nations, 8,000 men and women died As a result of the large-scale invasion launched by Putin last year. But the UN itself and various experts think the figure is likely much higher and will increase in the coming weeks and months.