‘We have to remember our heroes’ – Ukraine’s memorial wall overflows as war enters new phase

A funeral is held for a Ukrainian soldier at St Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv, Ukraine – Anadolu Agency/Anadolu

A 19-year-old shot dead by a sniper while trying to save a wounded comrade. A student killed four days after telling his girlfriend he loved her. A father struck down by mortar fire while trying to escape encirclement by the enemy.

They are among the tens of thousands of soldiers who have died fighting against Russia, and their faces adorn a vast memorial in Kyiv that serves as a symbol of the heavy price Ukraine has paid to keep Vladimir Putin’s forces at bay.

Hanna Yaremchuk-Bobalo, 45, said: “He was so beautiful,” as she looked at a picture of her husband Oleh, a film director who worked with Volodymyr Zelensky in showbusiness before joining up to fight on the first day of the invasion. He was killed by mortar fire during the battle for Bakhmut.

The Wall of Remembrance of the Fallen for Ukraine, which covers the outer perimeter of Kyiv’s historic St Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, was set up in 2017 as a tribute to the victims of the war in Donbas, which began in 2014.

It was extended in 2022 to include an informal area for the renewed conflict, marked with a sign that reads “24.02.2022 – …”

The wall is now so full that people have resorted to adding their photo tributes to street signs and stone trimmings.

‘I counted down the days to my own death’

With Ukraine preparing to mark the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion, neither side is close to victory.

This week, tensions between Mr Zelensky and his top commander, Gen Valery Zaluzhny, led to the army chief’s replacement in the biggest shakeup of the country’s military leadership since the war began.

At the heart of the upheaval was a disagreement between the pair over how many soldiers should be mobilised. Gen Zaluzhny said Ukraine needed 500,000 more troops, a figure Mr Zelensky saw as impractical and potentially unpopular.

Gen Zaluzhny’s replacement, General Oleksandr Syrsky, has a reputation for brutality and is far less popular with both the public and certain military circles.

Replenishing his ranks is perhaps his biggest challenge but debate over how this should be done is dividing the country.

Meanwhile, thousands of Ukrainians are still coming to terms with the enormous cost of the war, including Kyiv’s dogged defence of Bakhmut and failed summer offensive. The pain, they said, has only hardened their resolve that Ukraine must win.

Ms Yaremchuk-Bobalo said she met her husband at 18. Their 21-year-old daughter, Liza, is studying in Prague. Ms Yaremchuk-Bobalo does not want her to come home out of fear from regular missile strikes – fragments from shot down weapons fell out of the sky and landed near her apartment last week.

She said: “When it first happened, I counted down the days to my own death, I just wanted to be with him.

“Then I realised that I had love for 25 years and I am a happy woman because of that. The Russians can’t take this treasure as it lives inside my soul.”

Two months after his funeral, Ms Yaremchuk-Bobalo fixed his photo on the memorial wall, one of the last taken of him. Not for herself, but – as life in Ukraine’s cities has returned to some sense of normality despite regular missile strikes – to remind others of the cost of freedom and independence.

“When we drink coffee, go about our days, we have to remember our heroes,” she said.

According to Ms Yaremchuk-Bobalo, when she joined We Are Together, a support group for war widows, in the months after her husband’s death in December, there were 500 members. Now there are over 3,000.

‘Meat grinders’ of Avdiivka and Robotyne

Casualty figures are a military secret on both sides of the war, but US officials estimated that close to 70,000 Ukrainian service personnel had been killed and 100,000-120,000 wounded as of August last year, the New York Times reported.

This past year is thought to have been particularly deadly, with the final intense days of the battle for Bakhmut and the unsuccessful counter-offensive believed to have cost both sides dearly.

Further deaths are likely to have racked up over winter as fighting rages in the “meat grinders” of Donetsk city Avdiivka and Zaporizhzhia village Robotyne.

Ivan Rybytva’s boyish face also looks out from the wall, he is holding a box of supplies delivered by volunteers and smiling.

After undertaking training in the UK, he was deployed to Bakhmut in April last year, when the situation there was at its worst. By his fourth day, he had been shot by a sniper while trying to help a wounded colleague.

His older brother Mykola Rybytva said: “The cost of the counter-offensive was enormous. Sometimes we visit two funerals in one week.

“The majority of those killed are civilians who would have just carried on their lives, their jobs, their studies, and not had to fight if there was no war. Every person is a tragedy.”

Hanna Prutsakova’s boyfriend Pylyp Ivanoff, 21, was a climate science student before he joined Kyiv’s territorial defence.

The last time she saw him was on the eve of his deployment to Bakhmut. They went for coffee together, confessed they were in love for the first time, and four days later he was dead.

She doesn’t have any photos with him, and because his body has not been recovered yet, there is no grave to visit.

Ms Prutsakova said: “The importance of these small symbolic gestures from loved ones can’t be underestimated. A father may place a photo of his killed son on the wall, and other family and friends can visit. It has created a very sad and tragic community.”

Ms Yaremchuk-Bobalo, whose family in Crimea have Russian sympathies, said she used to think that it was okay to give up Crimea and other territory to placate Russia.

“Now we have experienced so much pain, I can’t accept anything short of victory.”

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