The quiet of a Kyiv cemetery is broken by a trumpet salute, then a burst of rifle fire.
Soldiers stretch a Ukrainian flag over a shiny wooden coffin and stand silently alongside in the sparkling white snow. A woman cries, her face crumpling.
Natalia is burying her husband for the second time.
Vitaly was killed three years ago fighting in the eastern Donbas and his first grave was in their home town of Slovyansk. But Russian forces have advanced since then and the area is increasingly under attack.
So Natalia had her husband’s grave exhumed and Vitaly’s remains moved hundreds of miles to Ukraine’s capital.
“When we buried him in Slovyansk, land was being liberated and we thought the war would soon end,” Natalia explains, after the reburial ceremony conducted with military honours.
“But the frontline is constantly moving closer and I was scared Vitaly might end up under occupation.”
Vitaly was a ceramics artist who volunteered to defend his country in the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
“He didn’t want to, but he had do it. He was a patriot,” Natalia explains, through her tears. She was pregnant when her husband was killed and he never got to meet their daughter.”
”The decision to move Vitaly’s body from the land where he was born and fought was extremely painful.”
By Anthony Solly
