DOVHENKE, Ukraine (AP) — The smell in the car is sick and sweet, the overpowering scent of corpses that have lain too long in muck and ruin, the ones the dogs didn’t devour. Oleksii Yukov, a 38-year-old martial arts instructor who leads a team of volunteer body collectors in Ukraine, doesn’t notice.
He is on the phone with one of the mothers. She heard her son was injured in battle and left behind, but she’s not sure where.
“He was left to die and now they are telling me that ‘he died as a hero!?’” she says, choking out words between sobs.
“Don’t cry,” Yukov tells her. “Because if you get
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