David Pratt in Lviv: A Ukrainian soldier is laid to rest

Among them are elderly women, head-scarfed and bowed with age. Some are of a generation old enough to remember wars and oppression of the past that have gripped this part of Europe.

Stocky, surly looking men, cigarettes dangling from their lips and some clutching bunches of yellow and blue flowers also join the gathering alongside a two-line-deep rank of Ukrainian soldiers dressed in camouflage combat fatigues.

One of the soldiers carries a flag while another holds a framed portrait photograph of the fallen comrade they have come to honour and lay to rest.

The uniformed man in the picture wearing a beret looks out almost quizzically, as if surveying those that have mustered. Why are you here, his expression seems to suggest?

It was on March 14 in the eastern Ukrainian town of Lyman that sits in the Donetsk region, that 32-year-old Volodymyr Rurak was killed in action in one of the most fiercely contested areas of the war here.

Unlike many young Ukrainian men and women recently thrust into the unexpected maelstrom of frontline duty against the Russian invaders of their country, Volodymyr was no stranger to battle.

He had been a soldier since 2018 and was even given a presidential award for his bravery and service fighting in the eastern Donbas region against pro-Russian separatist forces there. On his social media account there is a picture of Volodymyr in a snowy landscape wearing white winter camouflage clothing, and cradling a Kalashnikov assault rifle.

It is an image in stark contrast with the suited, bow-tied, flower-wearing figure and much happier man giving a loving kiss to his bride Tanya, a local Lviv council worker, when they married in 2020.

Even happier times were to follow with the birth of a daughter who is now one-and-a-half years old. She fidgets in her mother’s arms, toys with a plastic necklace, and occasionally drinks from a carton of juice, oblivious to her father’s funeral and the outpouring of emotion around her last Friday.

Out of the sunshine it can be chilly in Lviv at this time of year. It was in these bitter shadows that Tanya and her daughter knelt in the cobbled street outside the baroque Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church alongside other mourners as pallbearers carried Volodymyr’s coffin slowly past and into the basilica.

In mourning

ALMOST all those assembled knelt while some made the sign of the cross, and both men and women wept openly.

Kneeling as a mark of respect for fallen soldiers in Ukraine has become commonplace ever since the turbulent days of the 2014 Euromaidan protests that rocked the country.

Sparked by the then-Ukrainian government’s decision to suspend plans to sign an association agreement with the European Union (EU) and lean more towards Russia, the instability would eventually lead to pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbas region deciding to go their own way.

But all that was before last month’s full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine that shocked the world, bringing pain and loss to countless people including Tanya Rurak and her daughter.

Those gathered outside the church realised all too well the price this family and so many others have paid across Ukraine. “We have come here to this church too many times, and who knows how many more times we will come to honour those who have given their lives, but we will continue to come until free from Russia and Putin,” one young woman mourner called Alina insists, standing with her sister and mother outside the church, holding a basket of flowers as they waited for the funeral cortege to pass.

That they didn’t know Volodymyr Rurak personally was of no consequence, they said. “He is Ukrainian and one of us, a hero of our nation – that’s all that matters,” Alina adds.

Inside the church, the wooden coffin was laid to rest on a plinth adjacent to aisles where portraits of the many others who have died and passed through this church line the walls.

The modernity of those depicted in the photographs sits in strange incongruity next to the sculpture and ornate decoration of the church’s interior in a city famous for its architecture and being one of Ukraine’s main cultural centres.

Almost every other day here now, at 11am, such funerals take place. The bodies of those killed often take days to arrive, having been ferried from frontlines far to the east as was the case with Volodymyr Rurak.

Many more to come

IF, as Russian president Vladimir Putin insists, the “second phase” of this war will concentrate on the Donbas region then doubtless the funeral ceremonies of many more soldiers who were natives of western Ukraine will take place under the high, decorative roof of Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church in Lviv.

Like Volodymyr, their coffins will be carried on the shoulders of their comrades, some tearful, out into the street where a brass-and-drum ensemble will play as the cortege moves back down across the smooth, worn cobbles to a waiting hearse.

Like Volodymyr, most will be taken to the the military memorial of the city’s historic Lychakiv Cemetery, the most famous cemetery in Ukraine.

There fresh graves garlanded with flowers and simple dark, wooden crosses mark the most recently interred while those just dug in preparation for forthcoming burials lie eerily in wait.

Nearby, too, sit more permanent gravestones marking those who have died during the eight years of battles that have gripped parts of eastern Ukraine, a fact that until Russia’s recent full-scale invasion was often seemingly forgotten by the rest of the world.

“It’s a reminder that we have been fighting the Russians and their allies far longer that people think,” says Maksym Koval, another of those who had come to pay their respects at Volodymyr’s funeral, though he, too, never knew the young soldier personally.

“I’m too old to fight, but the very least I can do right now is show my gratitude to those who can and have,” said the 76-year old former car mechanic.

In a ceremony before the burial, Volodymyr’s mother, flanked by Tanya and her own mother, are presented with the Ukrainian flag that adorns his coffin by a soldier from his unit.

It is a profoundly emotional moment that brings Tanya to another flood of tears, this time impacting even on her toddler daughter who until that moment seems blissfully unaware of the family’s grief.

As the coffin is lowered into the ground, the first of a three-shot volley rings out from a nearby honour guard, causing some around the graveside to wince involuntarily.

In what for the close family must seem like an interminably painful duration, the gravediggers shovel soil filling the grave as Tanya, daughter in arms, leans forward for a last look at the coffin that holds her husband.

It is a terribly painful and poignant moment among many that morning – one that will indelibly etch itself into the memories of those who were there that day.

Perhaps, too, it will be recounted years from now by a mother to a daughter grown up, now able to understand what became of her father and the sad events of that otherwise beautiful spring day back in March 2022.

Folded flag

AS the mourners file past the graveside, each in turn touching the cross that sits at its head, it was left for Volodymyr Rurak’s own mother, holding the carefully folded Ukrainian flag she had been presented with from her son’s coffin still draped across her arm, to have her own solitary moment of reflection and grief.

Just a few yards away next to another grave, a mother and wife whose son and husband had been buried here in Lychakiv Cemetery a few days earlier had returned to kneel by the place where their loved one now lay.

Reaching out to pick up her son’s framed photograph that sat among the floral tributes, the mother holds it to her breast before kissing and replacing the picture. Here again is yet another family riven apart by war, just like countless other families across Ukraine – and in Russia too – as a result of the inexplicable political ambitions of Vladimir Putin and some around him.

Where this war goes from here remains anyones guess. Perhaps Putin has finally realised his regime has bitten off more than it can chew in the shape of Ukraine’s fierce resistance, resolve, and determination to remain democratic and free from the shackles of dictatorship.

Perhaps the Russian leader will continue his next “phase” of the war in the Donbas regiona and east, in which case the carnage will continue and bodies pile up. In the meantime, he just might – out of sheer anger and frustration – try to lay waste to even more Ukrainian cities as the Russians already have in place like Mariupol, Kharkiv and elsewhere.

Casualty numbers and death tolls are among the most elusive figures in wartime with all sides seeking to underreport their own losses, while embellishing enemy casualties.

One thing certain in this conflict so far, however, is that thousands of combatants have died on both sides. As for civilians, the UN says an inability to confirm casualty counts amid ongoing fighting means the actual figures are likely much higher that even the most worst case estimates. All agree though the toll is horrific and that’s before factoring in the trauma inflicted upon individuals and communities alike. Here in Lviv many of the city’s citizens barely take notice of the almost daily air raid sirens that echo across town.

But mid-morning, almost daily, they continue to pause and line the cobbled streets outside Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church and gather in the Lychakiv Cemetery.

There they pause to say goodbye to those they love. Those that have fallen in battle defending their homes and land.