One of them, Lyudmila Kupriychuk, in the first days of the occupation of Kherson, was able to break into the territory controlled by the Russians and take the body of her son Maksim from there.

The second, Natalya Karpava, was able to find the body of her son Roman directly on the battlefield immediately after the liberation of the Kharkiv region.

Their stories were covered by the BBC.

"I never thought you could hate so much"

was

only 20 years old.

He died on the second day of the war, near Kherson, when the Russians covered his subdivision "Gradami".

Now the mother has created a small museum of his memory in her son's room.

Maksim was a professional soldier, served in Lviv and did not admit to his mother that he was transferred to the south.

Didn't want her to worry.

When the war started, Lyudmila called him first.

"I couldn't even imagine that he was there [near Kherson], because when I talked, he said that everything was fine, he was in Lviv," Lyudmila mentions.

Her son's girlfriend informed her about Maxim's death.

"She says that Maxim was killed.

And that's it, I don't remember anything else.

I only know that I screamed a lot.

They sent me that photo of a burnt armored personnel carrier, burnt bodies," the woman says, pausing to wipe away her tears.

"This is the route Genichesk - Novaya Kakhovka.

They died on it.

I understand that they were sent to guard the Kakhovskaya HPP.

They were covered with "Hradami", and they were with automatic weapons.

I don't know how they could fight back," Ludmila continues.

A photo from the place of Maxim's death - extremely terrible, so that it could be shown without censorship - was sent by his colleague, who confirmed the boy's death.

"You imagine that you are lying at home, when the evening comes, you go crazy.

You understand that your child is lying in a clean field, and it will be cold at night.

You lie down and think that he is freezing there, and no one will cover him."

It is so difficult for Lyudmila that from time to time the journalists stopped the recording to give her a rest.

The woman called Maxim's military unit every day, but every time she heard the same word - wait.

And after a few days, she realized that she could not wait any longer.

When her ex-husband, Maxim's father, called her, they decided to go for their son's body themselves.

On the morning of March 4, a week after Maxim's death, they went to look for him in an old Mercedes, which they bought especially for this trip.

At that time, the village where the son died was already under the occupation of the Russians, and the locals warned that they had started taking cars from Ukrainian civilians.

Ludmila says that they had no special plan, except to take away the body of their son.

When they approached the checkpoint, a machine gun was aimed at her.

The armed men said they were from the DNR.

The woman still cannot understand how she managed to negotiate with the militants.

They agreed to take her to the place of her son's death.

She got into their car, and her husband followed them.

When asked if she was scared, Lyudmila answered: "Ugly."

When they drove up to the APC where Maxim's body was, Lyudmila could not move.

His father followed his son's body.

"I saw how he tore open his jacket to look at the tattoo - whether it was there or not.

There is.

That's all that could be known.

Only dad.

There was nothing.

At that time, they had been lying there for the second week.

Burnt bodies, and now also bitten ones... When your child is being carried to you in a blanket, and a piece of equipment with the marking [Z] is driving by, the ground shakes under your feet," Ludmila mentions.

They took a blanket from home and wrapped their son's body in it.

They drove home to Vinnytsia for 12 hours.

Due to the fact that they were carrying their son's body in the trunk, they also managed to pass through the Ukrainian checkpoints with difficulty.

Later, when Maxim's body was examined in the morgue, the pathologist informed that he had been moved after his death.

"Well, why?

Were they afraid that he would now rise and catch up with them?

A splinter tore off his head.

Do you think he would have caught up with them if they had moved him?

They just didn't show him to me because he didn't have a head."

Now Lyudmila is trying to live a normal life, but she says that something has burned inside her.

Every month on the 25th, she takes a day off from work to visit her son's grave.

"I never thought it was possible to hate so much.

Not that you hate with your soul, you hate with every cell of your body.

Not only Putin, you hate the whole nation, because there is not only Putin.

It is not Putin who pushes the buttons, it is not Putin who shoots our children.

I want them to feel what we felt.

I want every mother to come to such a field where her burned child lies.

Maybe it's barbaric, but I want it," Ludmila admitted.

"My son lay in the field for six months"

's

son, Roman, died in April.

He was 30 years old and served as an electronic warfare engineer in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

He did not get in touch on April 23, and she decided to call the commander of his unit.

He tried to calm her down with the alleged lack of communication, and later Roman's friends reported his death.

They found his photo on the Russian Telegram channel, but the military didn't know anything about it.

She began her search for her son's body with this photo.

Soldiers from another military unit, whose soldiers were also in this picture, helped to determine the place of death.

After some time, she found out that Roman died near Izyum.

Fighters found his body with the help of a drone.

But it was impossible to take it away at once due to the fierce battles that took place there all the time.

Natalya waited and followed all the news from that area, and when Izyum was released, she started calling everyone to collect Roman's body for burial.

"I couldn't get to my son's body all this time, but I didn't let people forget that he needed to be taken away," the woman recalls.

And when the search team went there, she went with them.

Searching for bodies half a year after the death and prolonged fighting is a mission bordering on hopelessness and madness.

While retreating, the Russians mined the territory.

The first group of sappers blew up on the stretcher, but they were helped, sent to the hospital and continued the search.

The bodies of Roman and two other fighters were found by search dogs.

"The three of them were lying there like in the video of the Russians.

It turns out, they just threw them into the ravine.

They took these bodies, took them out, put them in bags, identified them.

My son had a badge... And these pants are his, on which I sewed a button myself.

I know one hundred percent that this is my child.

When we found the bodies, I felt a sense of relief that I finally got to see my child, I took him and I will bury him," the woman said.

The parents buried Roman, but they received a notification of his death from the Military Commissariat only after their story was recorded by journalists.

Russia's war against Ukraine

• At 5 o'clock in the morning on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the start of a military operation against Ukraine in the Donbass at the request of the "DPR" and "LPR" groups.

  On February 21, during a televised address to Russians, Putin called the so-called "DPR" and "LPR" independent states within the regions.

  On February 22, the Federation Council ratified this decision.

• All days of the war, Ukrainian cities were bombarded with rockets, aircraft flew over them.

  Russian troops are attacking, including from the territory of Belarus, using airfields, bases and roads.

  Representatives of Lukashenka's regime justify the war, his opponents consider the territory of Belarus to be occupied, many call for resistance to the Russian invaders.

• On February 27, the International Legion of Territorial Defense was created in Ukraine, and foreign volunteers were invited to join it.

  Belarusians also entered there.

• In 2022, 17 Belarusians were killed in Ukraine fighting for its independence.

  These are ten soldiers of the Kalinovsky Regiment and seven from other units fighting in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

  It is known about two Belarusian soldiers who were captured by the Russians.

• On March 30, the UN approved the composition of an independent commission that will investigate Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

  It included people who worked in the analysis of the genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

• Contrary to Putin's statements about attacks only on military facilities, the Russians are bombing schools, kindergartens and residential areas of Ukrainian cities.

  The Russians are using banned weapons, including cluster bombs, against civilians.

• On April 1, Lithuania became the first country in the European Union to completely abandon Russian gas.

  Latvia and Estonia followed her example.

  Germany has promised to completely stop using Russian oil by the end of 2022.

• On April 2, after the liberation of the town of Bucha near Kyiv, photojournalists published dozens of photographs showing hundreds of dead people, victims of mass murders committed by Russian troops.

  Many are buried in spontaneous mass graves.

  The Russian occupation also brought great destruction to the people of Barodyan.

  It is also known about a number of rapes, including babies.

• On May 9, the US President signed the Land Leasing Law.

  This law restores the program from the Second World War, which will speed up the delivery of weapons to Ukraine and increase the amount of such assistance.

• On July 29, as a result of an attack on the colony in Alenivka, at least 53 Ukrainian prisoners who defended the "Azovstal" plant in Mariupol and surrendered after completing their mission were killed.

  The Russians accused Ukraine of the attack, the Ukrainian side declared that the prisoners were deliberately killed by the Russian side.

  The Russian occupation authorities prevented the UN and Red Cross missions from entering Alenavka.

• Officials of Ukraine claim the death of 10,000 to 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers.

  Russia claims that more than 110,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and wounded.

• The military staffs of the USA and Europe assessed the losses of Russia and Ukraine as parity - about 100,000 soldiers on each side.

• During the six months of the war, Russia was able to occupy about 20% of the Ukrainian territory.

  In March, the area of ​​occupied land reached 30%.

  However, at the end of the month, Russian troops retreated from the north of Ukraine, as well as from most of the Kharkiv region.

  At the end of August, Crimea, Luhansk and Kherson regions were completely occupied.

  And also 50% of the territory of the Donetsk region, about 70% of the Zaporizhia region, approximately 30% of the Kharkiv region.

• Since February 24, Russia has captured only one regional center - Kherson.

  Russian troops retreated from it and from the right-bank part of the Kherson region in November 2022.

  The city was occupied by Russian troops in the first days of the war without actually fighting.

  Kyiv suspects part of the former leadership of Kherson and the region of treason.

  The former head of the SBU of the Kharkiv region was also detained on such suspicion.

  Now the front line in the Kherson region runs along the Dnieper.

  The Russian military regularly bombards Kherson and other territories on the right bank of the Dnieper.

• In September, Ukrainian troops launched a large-scale counteroffensive, as a result of which Russian forces began to rapidly flee from their positions in the Kharkiv region.

  Only on the day of September 11, Ukrainians liberated more than 20 settlements in Slobazhan region.

• In September, Ukraine withdrew its mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo under the AAN to send an aviation unit to defend against Russian aggression.

• On September 21, Putin announced the mobilization in Russia.

  After this statement, thousands of Russians went to the border crossings and began to leave for Georgia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Mongolia, Finland and other countries.

  In Russia itself, opponents of the war set fire to several military offices.

  Even people without military experience began to be conscripted into the army, despite promises that only experienced people would go to war.

  The mobilization of men into the Russian army also takes place in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

• On October 2, Putin submitted a bill to the Russian parliament, which is an attempt to annex parts of four regions of Ukraine.

  Two new republics - "LPR" and "DNR" - and two regions - Zaporizhia and Kherson will be part of Russia.

  But thanks to the counteroffensive of the Ukrainians, the borders drawn in Moscow are not fully controlled by the occupying forces.

• In October, Ukrainian troops successfully continued their counteroffensive, at the beginning of October they liberated Liman and Yampal, as well as significantly approached Svatov in the Luhansk region, and from there the way to Severodanetsk and Lysichansk opens.

• On the morning of October 10, the Russians began intensive shelling of Ukrainian territory, including the center of Kyiv.

  Rockets also reached Lviv, depriving the city of electricity.

  Since then, Russia has carried out about 10 missile attacks on infrastructure facilities and other civilian targets on the territory of Ukraine.

• On October 10, Lukashenka held a meeting with the Security Council and announced the deployment of a joint grouping of troops with Putin.

• On the evening of November 15, Russia fired 100 missiles across the territory of Ukraine, primarily at energy facilities, and in Poland, two missiles fell in the village of Przewodau, 6 km from the border with Ukraine, killing two people.

  The Polish authorities summoned the Russian ambassador for explanations.

  Then it turned out that it was probably the result of the work of the Ukrainian Air Defense Forces, which shot down a Russian missile.

• In November, with the onset of cold weather, Russia intensified its missile attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

  As a result, many Ukrainian cities and part of Moldova were left without electricity and water.

  Ukraine called an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council.

• On January 1, 2023, the Department of Strategic Communications of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported the death of almost 400 Russians during the attack on the building of the Polytechnic School No. 19 in Makeyevka.

  Russian soldiers were there and mobilized.

  The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation recognized 89 killed.

• Independent verification of information about military actions provided by officials of various parties is still impossible.