Ukraine buries unidentified soldiers as DNA matching continues

In a Kyiv military cemetery, rows of numbered crosses mark the graves of unidentified Ukrainian soldiers. Each cross reads “unknown defender of Ukraine” with an identification number and a note that work continues. One grave now carries a photograph of Ihor Yalynych, a soldier killed in April 2022 in the Kharkiv region.

His children, Stanislav and Oleksandra Yalynych, located the site after four years of searching that included DNA testing and navigation of multiple police jurisdictions.

Identification process Bodies recovered from battlefields and repatriated from Russian-held areas first enter refrigerated storage. DNA samples are taken and compared against a database of roughly 170,000 samples provided by relatives. When no database match exists, investigators search personal belongings or apartments for additional genetic material.

A registry links each body number to its grave so matches can later be exhumed or marked.

Scale of remains Ukraine has registered more than 40,000 samples from unidentified bodies since the 2022 full-scale invasion. Officials have repatriated 24,805 bodies in total. A Kyiv-region forensic examiner processes 15 to 20 bodies daily, a workload five times higher than before the invasion. Three soldiers initially buried as unknown have since been identified.

Administrative delays Ihor Yalynych’s file was reportedly sent to police in the Mykolaiv region and remained unprocessed for more than two years. Stanislav Yalynych said he was permitted to submit a DNA sample only six months ago; a match followed two months later.

Mykolaiv police stated they have no record of criminal proceedings related to the identification. Families of soldiers who enlisted before DNA collection began face additional obstacles because no early samples exist.