‘Relatives need to say goodbye’: Meet Ukraine’s body collectors who take fallen soldiers home from the frontline
Dealing with death is the grimmest reality of war – something few understand better than Taras.
The sergeant is part of a unit tasked with collecting the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers killed in action from morgues near the frontline and delivering them back to their families.
“I try to return our fallen warriors home as soon as possible,” Taras, 44, told Sky News as he drove his lorry through the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine.
“Their relatives need to say goodbye and bury them as it should be. So, that is my mission.”
It is a relentless cycle for him and the rest of the On The Shield team as Ukraine battles wave after wave of Russian attacks along the frontline across the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
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The Ukrainian authorities have not released figures of their war dead, but Western officials have put the number at more than 100,000 killed and injured since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022. The Russian toll is even higher, with the United States most recently saying the death toll alone was some 188,000.
Just one morning spent with Taras offered a sense of the scale of Ukraine’s loss.
He collected the bodies of 22 soldiers from two morgues alone.
Taras said seeing first-hand the price that his country is paying can become too much to bear.
“Sometimes I can’t sleep because of the young boys and girls,” he said.
“Sometimes I cry – like any normal person. Sometimes when I get back to our base, I am just lying there thinking and crying.”
Taras’s truck shuttles between frontline morgues and slain soldiers’ families
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Yet he puts on a brave face when greeting other members of the Shield team – part of the Ukrainian armed forces – as well as workers at the morgues and the medics, who retrieve the fallen from the battlefield and transport them to the frontline body-holding facilities.
They exchange greetings and hug.
Asked how he managed to keep smiling when dealing with death every day, Taras said: “It’s hard but we try to find a moment to smile. I call home, talk to my wife, to my children, parents, brothers. After that, my heart is warm and I want to smile.”
At the first morgue we visited with Taras in Kramatorsk, four bodies were waiting, each in a white, plastic body bag, with the name and date of birth of each of the deceased written in marker pen, where known.
The purpose of On The Shield is to return the military dead with dignity to their loved ones.
Working with officials at the morgue, the first two body bags were carefully carried forward and unzipped.
Soldiers must identify the dead at morgues near the frontline before they can be taken away
The face of one of the soldiers had been partially ripped off. A morgue official said the injuries had most likely been caused by an artillery shell.
There was no obvious sign of injury on the second soldier. He looked to be in some kind of frozen sleep. The same morgue official said he had been killed by the blast wave from an explosion. Both men died fending off Russian attacks around the area of village of Bilohorivka in Luhansk, where fierce fighting is raging.
Taras bent over the bodies in turn and took a photograph as part of the trail of evidence.
Identity papers are also checked, such as passports and ID cards.
The bags were then zipped up and transferred to the back of his lorry. Then the next two body bags were brought out.
The date on one of those bags – 8 February 1996 – revealed that the soldier it was holding would have been celebrating his 27th birthday. He was found with a military flag from his air assault brigade unit. The flag was folded up neatly, put into a plastic bag and placed on his torso before the body bag was zipped back up.
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A combat medic, who had brought the dead soldiers back from the battlefield, said it was clear that a new Russian offensive had already started.
“You can sense it because the frontline is not far from here. This is audible,” he said.
Asked whether he was seeing a concurrent rise in the number of dead soldiers being collected, he said: “It is not so relevant because we can’t always retrieve them from the battlefield because the aggressor does anything [to stop us]…
“Those bodies brought here do not reveal the true situation. We only bring the bodies that we can pull out. We can bring some out, but not all of them.”
With four bodies in the back of his lorry, Taras moved to a second morgue in the nearby city of Sloviansk. There, 15 bodies were already waiting to be collected, many in black rather than white plastic body bags. Four more then arrived in two military ambulances.
The body collector and other workers methodically processed the majority of the dead, with help from a young woman called Margo who oversaw the morgue.
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She said the number of fallen soldiers passing through varied by day. The highest number in a 24-hour period was 43.
“It does impact me, strongly,” she said, sitting at a small makeshift desk, where she signs off paperwork for each body.
“When I am taking documents and open them and see the date of birth, my tears are welling up from inside me. It is hard to keep myself composed. It is very hard.”
A military paramedic who gave her name as Lina was at this morgue, having helped retrieve some of the fallen from the frontline. She was in a rush to return to her unit.
“In our direction, it is pretty tense,” she said. “My guys are dying at this very moment and they need my help.”
Lina raced off to a waiting vehicle and left.
For Taras, his next stop was the much larger city of Dnipro, about a four-hour drive north. Two more On The Shield drivers, operating in other parts of the eastern frontline, also had collected bodies that morning and were heading in the same direction.
The bodies are transported to the main Dnipro morgue or two other morgues in the vicinity, where the military has established large, refrigerated lorries to be able to handle the volume of death rotating through.
Forensic experts at these facilities examine each body to determine the cause of death. Finally another member of the Shield unit transfers each fallen soldier to their respective families via recruitment centres in their local area anywhere in the country.
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Colonel Vladyslav, 42, the commander of the whole unit, urged the UK and other Western allies to give Ukraine more weapons and ammunition to bolster their capabilities and reduce the number of future losses they incur against Russia.
“The best men die for this war,” he said, speaking in good English, standing outside the Sloviansk morgue.
“We protect our country – that is obvious – but we do not have as many troops as Russia. Therefore, it’s most important to move on to victory as fast as we can.”
World
27 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire while waiting for aid distribution, says Hamas-run Gaza health ministry
Twenty-seven Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire while waiting for aid to be distributed, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
They were reportedly killed in the Rafah area of southern Gaza early on Tuesday.
The Hamas-run ministry claimed that more than 90 people were injured, with some in a serious condition.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it had fired shots about half a kilometre from the aid distribution site of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), adding that people were moving towards its forces in a way that “posed a threat to them”.
A woman reacts after 24 Palestinians were reportedly killed in the Rafah area. Pic: Reuters
A mourner reacts during the funeral of Palestinians killed in alleged Israeli fire. Pic: Reuters
The IDF said in a statement: “Earlier today (Tuesday), during the movement of the crowd along the designated routes toward the aid distribution site – approximately half a kilometre from the site – IDF troops identified several suspects moving toward them, deviating from the designated access routes.
“The troops carried out warning fire, and after the suspects failed to retreat, additional shots were directed near a few individual suspects who advanced toward the troops.”
It also highlighted that IDF troops were “not preventing the arrival of Gazan civilians to the humanitarian aid distribution sites”.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said its field hospital in Rafah received 184 casualties. A spokesperson added that 19 of those were declared dead upon arrival, and eight died of their wounds shortly after.
There were three children and two women among the dead, according to Mohammed Saqr, who is the head of nursing at Nasser Hospital in Gaza.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said in a statement that Israel was transforming aid distribution centres “into mass death traps and bloodbaths” as 102 people were killed and 490 more injured in just eight days since the centres opened on 27 May.
The aid centres were “luring starving civilians to them as a result of the crippling famine”, according to the media office, which called for humanitarian aid delivered through UN agencies and neutral international organisations rather than the GHF.
An ambulance outside Nassar hospital in Gaza, where people allegedly injured by Israeli fire were taken
Palestinians arriving at Nassar hospital following alleged Israeli fire near an aid distribution site
The alleged shooting comes just two days after reports that 31 people were killed as they walked to a distribution centre run by the GHF in the Rafah area.
Witnesses said the deaths came after Israeli forces opened fire, while Palestinian and Hamas-linked media attributed the deaths they reported to an Israeli airstrike.
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The IDF later said its forces “did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site and that reports to this effect are false”.
On Monday, three more Palestinians were reportedly killed by Israeli fire.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said he was “appalled” by reports of Palestinians killed and injured while seeking aid.
He called for an independent investigation and said: “It is unacceptable that Palestinians are risking their lives for food.”
Two women cry during the funeral of Palestinians killed early Tuesday. Pic: Reuters
Palestinians arrived to collect aid from a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation hub in Rafah last week. File pic: Reuters
Last week, Israel accepted a US-brokered ceasefire proposal, which would see the release over the course of a week of nine living hostages and half of the known hostages who have died.
But Hamas said that it was seeking amendments to the proposed 60-day truce, offering 10 living Israeli hostages and the bodies of 18 in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
There is a distinct moment when the tranquillity of the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary envelops our car as we drive higher up the mountain.
The buzz of Freetown gives way to the hushed calm of this pocket of pristine rainforest reserved for critically endangered western chimpanzees rescued from across Sierra Leone.
The quiet is necessary. These bright primates – closest related to humans in the animal kingdom – are easily disturbed and the ones living in Tacugama are particularly sensitive.
The more than 120 chimpanzees brought here are traumatised survivors of mistreatment, hunting and violent separation from their families in the wild.
They are now facing another existential threat. Illegal encroachment is eating away at the edges of the conservation area. Despite wildlife laws, forest has been cleared to make way for houses being constructed closer and closer to chimp enclosures.
Forest has been cleared to make way for houses being constructed closer and closer to chimp enclosures
“We’ve been issuing several warnings over the last year,” says Tacugama founder Bala Amarasekaran. “Four months ago – again – we gave a warning. Then we had presidential intervention say that some of this encroachment will be stopped. It started very well for the first month then everything stopped again and we are back at square one. So, we are very tired and very stressed.”
Thirty years ago, Mr Amarasekaran appealed to the government to donate land and partner with him to create a sanctuary for the protection of the abused orphaned chimps he was finding across Freetown. Today, land in the Western Area Forest Reserve is being grabbed right under the government’s nose.
“The government has been very good in terms of helping us in every way – however we expect the leadership to be more firm,” says Mr Amarasekaran.
“When we talk to them, they are all with us. They all want to help. But when it comes to action it looks like some of the departments that have the mandate to institute certain laws and take the necessary law enforcement action are not acting.”
Tacugama founder Bala Amarasekaran
Sanctuary closes its doors to focus on conservation, rehabilitation and research
Tacugama has grown to become Sierra Leone’s most popular tourist attraction over the last three decades. But in a stand against the fast-approaching illegal encroachment, the sanctuary has closed its doors to visitors to focus on conservation, rehabilitation and research.
“It is not a tourist attraction – we made it become a tourist attraction. It is supposed to be an orphanage for rescued chimpanzees,” Mr Amarasekaran says.
“They are used to us and some visitors but they will start to see strangers come and that is where the problems start. They are not comfortable with strangers – don’t forget it is the stranger who killed their mother. It is the stranger that wiped out their group.”
‘A complex problem’
We asked Sierra Leone’s government spokesperson and minister of information and civic education, Chernor Bah, about the illegal encroachment.
“It is a complex problem. You have a city that is growing. People need places to stay and we have not done the best job in terms of enforcing all these limitations,” he replied. “Some of our agents seem to have been complicit in allocating and giving people land in places they are not supposed to stay. So, I don’t think I can sit here and say we have done enough – there is much more we can do.
“[Tacugama] is probably our most cherished and significant wildlife asset in the country.”
A national symbol for tourism
In 2019, the government designated the western chimpanzee as the national animal and national symbol for tourism. The image of a chimp is now etched in Sierra Leonean passports, a result of Tacugama’s advocacy Mr Amarasekaran and his team hope will entrench a love and respect for chimps that will curb the need for intervention.
“We wanted something more – that is how the national animal bill came through,” says Mr Amarasekaran.
“We thought if the agencies that are mandated to do all the law enforcement are not active and effective, then maybe we need to create a synergy between the people and the animals.”
Chimpanzees hunted for bushmeat
But chimpanzees are still being hunted as bushmeat for food across Sierra Leone and baby chimps are being torn from their families to be kept as illegal pets. Tacugama’s latest rescue is only eight months old.
Baby Asana is frail with thinning hair and is being nursed back to health by his chimp mum, Mama P, when we meet him. He was rescued after an informant sent a video of Asana wearing human clothes and being mistreated as an illegal pet in Bo, Sierra Leone’s second largest city.
“For me as the founder of the sanctuary, I feel defeated,” says Mr Amarasekaran with Asana being cared for behind him.
“These chimps shouldn’t be arriving here if we have done enough work outside – there shouldn’t be any killings, there shouldn’t be any rescues. That is the time when I can say that I achieved something.”
Research from the Jane Goodall Institute identified that between five and 10 chimpanzees die for every surviving rescued chimpanzee. And with the sanctuary closed, much-needed public advocacy work will take a hard hit.
‘Until I came to the sanctuary, I didn’t see a chimpanzee’
“I’m really concerned because I only even started to experience chimpanzees when I started working here. I knew that we had chimps here. But until I came to the sanctuary, I didn’t see a chimpanzee,” says 25-year-old Tacugama communications officer, Sidikie Bayoh.
“Now, we are at a situation where we are closed indefinitely but what if this becomes something wherein we can never open the sanctuary again for people to visit? Then you will have all these young Sierra Leoneans never fully understanding what their national animal is.”
Tacugama communications officer Sidikie Bayoh
The closure also means there will be no revenue from visitors at a time when USAID funding has been halted.
“In the absence of funding from – at the moment – the US government, it is going to be difficult for us to turn around quickly,” says Mr Amarasekaran.
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He then shrugs and smiles knowingly, adding: “We are very resilient – we are like chimpanzees. So, we will manage somehow.”
A senior official in former president Joe Biden’s administration has told Sky News that he has no doubt that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza.
Speaking to the Trump 100 podcast, Matthew Miller, who, as a state department spokesman, was the voice and face of the US government’s foreign policy under Mr Biden, revealed disagreements, tensions and challenges within the former administration.
In the wide-ranging conversation, he said:
• It was “without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes”;
• That Israeli soldiers were not being “held accountable”;
• That there were “disagreements all along the way” about how to handle policy;
• And that he “would have wanted to have a better candidate” than Mr Biden for the 2024 election.
Mr Miller served as the state department spokesman from 2023 until the end of Mr Biden’s presidential term. From the podium, his job was to explain and defend foreign policy decisions – from Ukraine to Gaza.
“Look, one of the things about being a spokesperson is you’re not a spokesperson for yourself. You are a spokesperson for the president, the administration, and you espouse the positions of the administration. And when you’re not in the administration, you can just give your own opinions.”
Now out of office, he offered a candid reflection of a hugely challenging period in foreign policy and US politics.
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Miller: Israel ‘committed war crimes’
Gaza disagreements
Asked about Gaza, he revealed there were “small and big” disagreements within the Biden administration over the US-Israeli relationship.
“There were disagreements all along the way about how to handle policy. Some of those were big disagreements, some of those were little disagreements,” he said.
Pushed on rumours that then-secretary of state Antony Blinken had frustrations with Mr Biden over both Gaza and Ukraine policy, Mr Miller hinted at the tensions.
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“I’ll probably wait and let the secretary speak for himself… but I will say, speaking generally, look, it is true about every senior official in government that they don’t win every policy fight that they enter into. And what you do is you make your best case to the president.
“The administration did debate, at times, whether and when to cut off weapons to Israel. You saw us in the spring of 2024 stop the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel because we did not believe they would use those in a way that was appropriate in Gaza.”
Through the spring and summer of 2024, the Biden administration was caught between its bedrock policy of the unconditional defence of its ally Israel and the reality of what that ally was doing in Gaza, with American weapons.
Mr Mill said: “There were debates about whether to suspend other arms deliveries, and you saw at times us hold back certain arms while we negotiated the use of those arms…
“But we found ourselves in this really tough position, especially in that time period when it really came to a head… We were at a place where – I’m thinking of the way I can appropriately say this – the decisions and the thinking of Hamas leadership were not always secret to the United States and to our partners.”
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Matthew Miller during a news briefing at the state department in 2023. Pic: AP
He continued: “And it was clear to us in that period that there was a time when our public discussion of withholding weapons from Israel, as well as the protests on college campuses in the United States, and the movement of some European countries to recognise the state of Palestine – appropriate discussions, appropriate decisions – protests are appropriate – but all of those things together were leading the leadership of Hamas to conclude that they didn’t need to agree to a ceasefire, they just needed to hold out for a little bit longer, and they could get what they always wanted.”
“Now, the thing that I look back on, that I will always ask questions of myself about, and I think this is true for others in government, is in that intervening period between the end of May and the middle of January [2025], when thousands of Palestinians were killed, innocent civilians who didn’t want this war, had nothing to do with it, was there more that we could, could have done to pressure the Israeli government to agree to that ceasefire? I think at times there probably was,” Mr Miller said.
Asked for his view on the accusation of genocide in Gaza, he said: “I don’t think it’s a genocide, but I think it is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes.”
Challenged on why he didn’t make these points while in government, he said: “When you’re at the podium, you’re not expressing your personal opinion. You’re expressing the conclusions of the United States government. The United States government had not concluded that they committed war crimes, still have not concluded [that].”
Anthony Blinken, left, with then US President Joe Biden. Pic: AP
He went on to offer a qualification to his accusation.
“There are two ways to think about the commission of war crimes,” he said.
“One is if the state has pursued a policy of deliberately committing war crimes or is acting recklessly in a way that aids and abets war crimes. Is the state committing war crimes?
“That, I think, is an open question. I think what is almost certainly not an open question is that there have been individual incidents that have been war crimes where Israeli soldiers, members of the Israeli military, have committed war crimes.”
The Israeli government continues to strongly deny all claims that it has committed war crimes in Gaza.
On Joe Biden’s election hopes
Mr Miller also offered a candid reflection on the suitability of Mr Biden as a candidate in the 2024 US election. While Mr Biden initially ran to extend his stay in the White House, he stepped aside, with Kamala Harris taking his place as the Democratic candidate.
“Had I not been inside the government, had I been outside the government acting kind of in a political role, of course, I would have wanted to have a better candidate,” he said.
“It’s that collective action problem where no one wants to be the first to speak out and stand up alone. You stand up by yourself and get your head chopped off, stand up together, you can take action.
“But there was never really a consensus position in the party, and there was no one that was willing to stand up and rally the party to say this isn’t going to work.
“I don’t think there is anyone on the White House staff, including the most senior White House staffers, who could have gone to Joe Biden in the spring of 2023 or at any time after that and told him: ‘Mr President, you are not able to do the duties of this job. And you will not win re-election.’ He would have rejected that outright.”
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Biden’s presidency in 60 seconds
The Trump presidency
On the Donald Trump presidency so far, he offered a nuanced view.
He described Mr Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as “an extremely capable individual” but expressed his worry that he was being manipulated by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I know the people in the Biden administration who worked with him during the first negotiations for Gaza ceasefire thought that he was capable.
“I think at times he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. And you see that especially in the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, where you see him go into a meeting with Vladimir Putin and come out spouting Russian propaganda… I think he would benefit from a little diplomatic savvy and some experienced diplomats around him.”
Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, left, with Vladimir Putin. Pic: Sputnik/AP
He continued: “But I do think it’s extremely important that when people sit down with an envoy of the United States they know that that envoy speaks for the President of the United States and it is very clear that Witkoff has that and that’s an extremely valuable asset to bring to the table.”
On the months and years ahead under Mr Trump, Mr Miller said: “The thing that worries me most is that Donald Trump may squander the position that the United States has built around the world over successive administrations of both parties over a course of decades.
“I don’t think most Americans understand the benefits that they get to their daily lives by the United States being the indispensable nation in the world.
“The open question is: will the damage that he’s doing be recoverable or not?”
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