An industry is growing in Ukraine around families desperate to find their sons who are missing from the front line of the war with Russia.
Lieutenant Oleg Kurilsky’s last known words were “I am wounded, I need help”. In March last year, he was fighting in Poposna in eastern Ukraine when he was caught up in a massive Russian artillery bombardment. The shelling was far too heavy for comrades to come to his rescue, and his commanders believe he could never have survived.
Oleg, 22, is among nearly 24,000 people who have gone missing during Ukraine’s war, according to the country’s newly created Commission for Missing Persons. While many are in all likelihood dead, their families are often reluctant to hold funerals, stranding themselves in a limbo between grief and hope.
‘I feel that his heart is still beating, but he is in a very small space with the walls pressing in on him.’Olha has tried all three. On Facebook, she consulted the services of a man calling himself Vasily Shal, who claimed to be able to search Russian prison records. She paid him 2,000 Hryvnas for the service, the money apparently being used to pay an intermediary in Russia.
Olha said: “I’m a churchgoer and I don’t normally believe in mediums, but I’ll try anything that might lead me to my son. I can’t help noticing too that they all said the same thing.” Explaining her technique, she said: “First, I light a candle and read a prayer. Then I take the missing person’s photo and put my hand on it.” she said. “If my hand feels warm, it means that the person is alive – if cold, it means that the person is no longer here.” If she detected a death, she added, she always urged relatives “not to lose faith and hope”.
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