As Dmytro Kotenko was laid to rest, his parents were 600 miles away, trapped under Russian bombs.
Dmytro Kotenko died near the southern city of Kherson and was buried in Lviv, safe for now from falling bombs
Kotenko's father was a truck driver. His mother worked on a local farm. "To join the army meant to come up in the world," Yarovenko said. "I think this was part of the reason Dmytro signed up." The Kotenkos were a poor family, two parents and three sons, with a modest house in a small Russian-speaking village on the Russian border in eastern Ukraine — the very people the Russian president Vladimir Putin claims he is rescuing from the yoke of Ukrainian oppression.
"Dmytro's parents loved him and he loved them," Yarovenko said, wiping tears from his cheeks. "Dmytro would always help them with repairs, he was good at that. Even at school or at the academy he would always help. He was very good to his parents. I never heard them argue." The next morning, Kotenko and Yarovenko said their goodbyes and Kotenko went south. They continued messaging every day. On 26 February, Kotenko stopped responding, and Yarovenko feared the worst. Eventually he reached the commander of Kotenko's unit by phone, who told him his friend had been killed by a mortar shell.
Next to where he stood, there are boards mounted with pictures of Ukraine's war dead. The first pictures were put up by the chaplains in 2014, to honour the fallen soldiers who had been members of the church. Then bereaved parents from around Lviv saw the pictures and wanted their sons and daughters to be there, and gradually the collection of portraits grew.
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