Lessons from a military funeral in Ukraine

TORKIV, Ukraine — At the entrance to the village cemetery, where they buried Vasyl Pushkar, stands a tall, gray stone marker.

The stone is engraved with an Orthodox cross and the words “Holodomor, 1932-33,” a memorial to the four million or more Ukrainian peasants who were starved to death by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin when their farms were collectivized and their harvests seized.

Ninety years later, Vladimir Putin is sending food prices for poor nations soaring by blocking Ukraine’s grain exports, which come from black earth villages such as Torkiv, a community of a thousand people about 200 miles south of Kyiv. Meantime, on Monday, village residents gathered to bury their latest casualty from Moscow’s current genocidal effort to erase Ukraine from the map.

No wonder the pain and the defiance here run deep.

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Mobilized in March, the 42-year-old Pushkar died from wounds sustained in a mine explosion on the war’s front lines in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. After four weeks in the hospital, he fell into a coma, shortly after speaking with his 3-year-old daughter for the last time.

The village turned out the day before the funeral to line the narrow road and kneel as the body was delivered to his parents’ tidy cottage. When I entered their living room, a picture of a handsome man in uniform held pride of place on the mantle. It bore little resemblance to the torn and reassembled face in the coffin nearby.

Bent over her son, Pushkar’s mother constantly rearranged the surrounding bouquets of flowers, as his father wept by her side.

The skies were deeply overcast, and rain spattered the road as soldier colleagues carried Pushkar’s body the last two miles from his parents’ home to the burial ground. The coffin had been carefully wrapped in the Ukrainian flag.

Elderly female mourners, bent over walking sticks, trudged up the road without assistance. A local band, with tuba and bass drum, played funeral music along the route. Police officers knelt by the roadside as the cortege passed.

Noticeable by their absence were men of military age. They were all at the front.

At the cemetery, the coffin was opened one more time. Pushkar’s wife, who had stood like a black-clad statue throughout the religious service, threw herself onto the casket and kissed her husband’s face, chest, and feet. His mother and father sobbed uncontrollably.

Then the coffin lid was carefully screwed on once again, the flag was folded and handed to the widow, and the body lowered into the grave.

The village’s anger at Putin’s brutal war exploded when the crowd gathered to hear a senior officer from Pushkar’s 59th Brigade eulogize the sacrifice of their fallen son.

“Give us a promise,” a woman shouted at Major Andre (identified here by his military call sign). “Give us a promise that when this war is over, you will build an alley of heroes for all the sons who have died from this village.” The major swiftly responded, “I promise not only an alley but also their portraits will be in the school where they studied. These heroes never die. They go on living in our hearts.”

I caught up with a visibly moved Major Andre as the crowd dispersed. He has been to 20 such funerals of men from battalions within the 59th Brigade. He would have attended many more had his military duties not made that impossible.

“This is the answer to why we have to move slowly,” he told me bitterly, pointing back at the grave site. He was referring to critiques from U.S. officials that the current Ukrainian counteroffensive against the Russians has not moved quickly enough. But lacking air cover (given the long-delayed delivery of U.S.-made F-16s, and possessing only limited numbers of old Soviet-made planes), Ukraine’s military leaders have slowed their attack lest their infantry be slaughtered.

“What [Ukrainian military commander Valery] Zaluzhny is doing is absolutely correct, respecting the life of every soldier,” the major continued, vehemently. “Of course we will win, but it is about the amount of losses it will take.”

What eats at Major Andre, and at so many soldiers and officers I met on the front lines, is that their losses could have been slashed if Washington had not delayed the arrival of F-16s until next spring. And the number of Ukrainian dead still could be cut if the White House would finally green-light the long-range ATACMS missiles that could destroy Russian bases and supply depots far behind fighting lines. “It will cost too many losses without ATACMS,” the major said.

He then took out his iPhone and showed me photos of the bodies of two of his men who were captured by Russian troops in the Donbas region. They had been tortured, with tongues cut out and throats slashed. He flicked through more shots of distorted bodies, dead from the fumes of old chemical shells the Russians periodically fire.

The Ukrainian military takes great risks to recover the bodies of their fallen, he stressed, while the Russians leave many of their dead and wounded behind and even booby-trap the bodies.

“How can we negotiate with such people?” the major demanded — a query I have heard repeatedly on this trip.

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What grieved this officer even more is that many Americans and Europeans don’t seem to grasp that this is not a war about NATO. It is a battle for Ukraine’s very survival that affects all of Europe and the United States.

“Now Ukraine stands on the border [in Europe] between good and evil, between darkness and light. We are defending the values of the whole civilized world. The West should understand this,” he said.

As we drove away from the cemetery, the clouds lifted. We passed a stretch of golden sunflowers whose ubiquitous presence in Ukrainian farmlands always lifts the spirits. I believe Ukraine could drive the Russians out in the coming months if it gets the weapons it needs now for this counteroffensive.

Yet, on leaving Torkiv, it was painful to realize how many more Ukrainians will be grieving their dead in villages and cities if the U.S. doesn’t act decisively to help end this war.