Body swaps Collecting the Russian dead to bring fallen troops home

In a deserted village in northern Donetsk, a group of volunteers set about the grim task of extracting two decomposing Russian corpses from the cellar of a destroyed house.

- Isobel Koshiw, Lorenzo Tondo 

The two Russians, wearing summer uniforms, had been placed in the cellar - presumably by their fellow combatants. The village, Krasnopillia, is not far from the city of Izium, which was passed between Ukrainian and Russian hands several times before Ukrainian forces retook it in September. By March, the two bodies had decayed to such an extent that they were identifiable only by their dog tags. 

The aim is to collect Russian bodies to exchange for Ukrainians, as a soldier cannot be declared dead by the state until there is a body, but the process of extracting them is extremely risky. Like much of the de-occupied area, Krasnopillia is littered with antipersonnel mines. Russia has been using remote systems that scatter tiny mines from the air. There have also been several instances of Russian forces booby-trapping bodies and houses before retreating.

"The mines are dropped from rockets and so they can be anywhere. They can even be caught in trees and blow off in the wind," said one volunteer, Artur, who was piloting a donated drone to document the bodies' recovery.