As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stretches into its fifth year, horrifying new milestones are being reached.
This month, the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that more than two million people have now died in the conflict – a number that is only growing.
Among the dead are at least eight New Zealanders believed to have been killed while fighting for Ukraine – one of whom made his return to Aotearoa last week with the support of US-based NGO the R.T. Weatherman Foundation.
Lauren Guillaume, the foundation’s chief strategy officer, who travelled to Auckland for the repatriation of the New Zealander, describes the man as “a normal dude” with a civilian background who felt compelled to support Ukraine’s cause.
In addition to teaching combat medicine, evacuating wounded fighters to European partner hospitals, and providing mental health support for conditions like PTSD, the foundation has played a major role in helping to identify the bodies of those killed in action and return them to their families.
“They receive this call – sometimes it’s a text message or a notification that their loved one died, sometimes they learn about it on social media,” Guillaume tells Newsroom.
“Sometimes they don’t even know that their brother, their son, was actually fighting in Ukraine and not doing humanitarian aid, or that they were over there to begin with, and so we walk them through the process and we inform them of what is ahead.”
The foundation helps the families to navigate language barriers and Ukraine’s bureaucracy, while also working with foreign diplomats (like those from New Zealand) who may hold valuable information but face political constraints on putting it to use.
Kits are sent to the soldier’s family to build up a DNA profile, which is then uploaded into a Ukrainian database along with other information like dental records and photos of tattoos or other identifiable features.
There is always a risk that a body will never be recovered or identified, given they are often only accessible as the result of an exchange of remains between Russia and Ukraine.
The growing role of drone warfare in recent years has also made it more difficult to recover bodies, meaning they are left on the battlefield to deteriorate, while the explosive wounds that come with drone attacks can be more damaging than sniper fire.
That has led to advances in identification methods, moving away from mere DNA identification to include fingerprinting, dental forensics, anthropological studies of bone fragments, and the collection of personal effects to be recorded in a database for investigators.
Guillaume says the foundation has also provided support to Ukraine’s underpaid and overworked forensic experts, funding their training in new skills and taking them overseas to deliver presentations on their work.
“While most resources are sent to the front right now, we’ll send our resources to the back.”
When a body can’t be recovered, the foundation has sometimes petitioned the Ukrainian courts to have a soldier’s status changed from missing to killed in action, using witness testimony, drone footage and other open-source information as evidence.
“Getting a death certificate, it’s not going to change their grief, but it’s going to help them be able to close out administrative affairs back home, like accessing bank accounts, mortgages, phone bills, all of that stuff,” Guillaume says.
“For the foreign families, it makes a huge difference because their government’s tax system doesn’t care about the war: at the end of the day, this person is alive in their country, and so some families have to continue to pay taxes on their dead loved one because there’s no legal documentation.”
‘I could be walking on the street in Kyiv … at this point, if you see a four- or five-year-old, they were born in war, and it’s just crazy to think that you have a whole generation of kids right now that are growing up with something that sounds like a lawnmower but it’s actually a drone, or the ringing of an air raid alert that sounds like a fire truck.’
Lauren Guillaume, R.T. Weatherman Foundation
It is emotionally taxing work, she says, speaking of the “lens of ambiguous grief” that families deal with when they are unable to fully mourn their loved ones without certainty about their death.
“Seeing their mom or dad or sibling put their hand on that casket, it’s literally an exhale every single time – it’s this exhale of relief …
“That’s why it means so much to be able to take the six-day journey of honouring a soldier in Kyiv, driving them across the border, getting all the paperwork from the embassy … flying literally all around the world, going through Qatar right now, making sure that the funeral home hearing in New Zealand does as little as possible to make it easy on the family.”
Guillaume has worked with a number of New Zealanders, from soldiers injured in combat to the families of those who have lost their lives (the foundation helped return the body of Dominic Abelen last year) and says they are motivated by the values that Kiwis and Ukrainians have in common.
“There’s a wounded Kiwi who had an above-the-knee amputation who we supported – he’s actually had to now repivot from doing his infantry work to now learning how to operate a drone.
“But as he was in the Kyiv hospital and we were working on his documents to go abroad to Lithuania, I went in and brought him some chicken and rice, a home-cooked meal, and I just sat down with him and another Kiwi that I know …
“We were just talking, and he was sharing about how when he was out east, and a Ukrainian farmer was giving them goat milk and really anything they had … it’s just those individuals who are a very rare breed choosing to fight for those values, versus just standing by them.”
Guillaume sees no end to the war in the near future – a difficult reality for the entire world, but particularly for Ukrainians weary of never-ending conflict.
“I could be walking on the street in Kyiv … at this point, if you see a four- or five-year-old, they were born in war, and it’s just crazy to think that you have a whole generation of kids right now that are growing up with something that sounds like a lawnmower but it’s actually a drone, or the ringing of an air raid alert that sounds like a fire truck.”
While the status of New Zealanders fighting against Russian troops has been a topic of contention, she says the foundation would like to develop a memorial to honour those who have lost their lives in Ukraine.
“I can go to Te Papa and see all the medals and those who have earned the Victoria Cross and read their stories; I know that these New Zealanders came [to Ukraine] as civilians, but they still carry the value system of a Kiwi, and they represented this belief in a foreign country, and I think that is quite special.”
