A Ukrainian soldier returns to his village, for the last time

On the cobblestone street outside Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church, Ukrainian soldiers carried the casket of a fellow serviceman into a black hearse van.

As mourners lay bouquets wrapped in blue and yellow ribbon over the wood coffin, a sturdy man with white hair consoled the fallen soldier’s mother.

He knew what she was going through. He would be back the next day to bury his own son, Senior Lieutenant Vasyl Vushuvanyi, he said.

“We don’t even have our son’s bodies, only fragments,” he said.

He said he would be taking his son’s casket home to his village outside the city, and he wanted a reporter to come because he had a message to deliver.

“I want to say to the Russian soldiers,” he said, “as a father I am telling you please stop, please go back to your fathers and mothers.”

Two weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin started a war on Europe’s doorstep and set off a massive refugee crisis, Ukraine has proved resilient.

Ukrainians have captivated the world with their improbable resistance against Russia’s invasion, but it has come at a cost.

Since the war began on Feb. 24, eight soldiers have received last rites at Lviv’s garrison church, a tall baroque building that is the military chaplaincy of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic church. Ceremonies for five were held on Tuesday and Wednesday alone.

They were sent off with tears and bugles, grief and pageantry, as well as the uncertainty of those left behind to wonder how much more hardship lay ahead.

Nobody could say how a war triggered by an authoritarian’s whim to grab Europe’s largest country might end, but those who paid their respects to Vushuvanyi were worried.

A mother said her son was a veteran of the 2014 conflict with Russia, and he was waiting to be called up. She said he now had a son of his own. “We are not raising kids just for war,” she said.

How many Ukrainian soldiers have lost their lives to Russian forces so far remains unclear. Between 2,000 and 4,000 Russian troops have died, according to U.S. officials.

Vushuvanyi was killed on March 4 in the Mykolayiv region of southern Ukraine. A commander of the 80th Brigade, he was laying mines on a road to stop the advance of Russian forces when shelling began, said his brother Kurulo Vushuvanyi.

He got his unit to take cover, but an artillery round struck a mine they had just planted, causing an explosion. His deputy also died. All the rest survived, said the brother, who is also a soldier.

On Wednesday morning, mourners gathered outside Lviv’s garrison church, among them Julia Grafova, a military veteran and the wife of a soldier. Vushuvanyi was the friend of a friend, she said.

“I know only one thing, he had a very beautiful love story,” she said before spotting Vushuvanyi’s girlfriend, Mariana, and rushing to hug her. “He died for all of us,” she said.

The church where the funeral was held had been a military house of worship for almost 200 years when it was shut by the Soviets following the Second World War and turned into a science library.

It resumed its role as the church of the Ukrainian forces in 2011, three years before Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula.

Portraits of soldiers killed in the Crimean conflict hang on the church walls, along with a collection of war debris: bullet casings, mortar shells, ammunition clips and a battered canteen.

“They died for Ukraine,” a sign read.

A notice at the entrance asked for donations of body armour, helmets, blankets and generators for the troops fighting Russia. Beside it, a flyer advised potential recruits to scan a bar code with their phones for details on enlisting.

Outside, priests lined up across the street as three hearse vans arrived. Soldiers in camouflage lifted out the caskets, carried them inside and laid them at the front of the church under the ceiling frescos.

A soldier stood behind each casket holding a crucifix bearing the names of the fallen: Dinytro Kotenko, 21; Kyrylo Moroz, 26; and Vushuvanyi, the eldest of the trio at 28.

A priest swung a censer, wafting incense towards the coffins, then sprinkled water over them. Mariana stood at the front, embracing a portrait of Vushuvanyi, her chin resting on top of the wooden frame.

Her hair was long and straight. In the photo, Vushuvanyi wore his dress uniform, and there was a row of medals on his chest. The family said the couple was to marry when he returned from the war.

“I don’t want to believe he’s dead,” his mother wailed after Vushuvanyi’s casket was carried back outside and into the hearse. “Why did this happen? He wanted to come back so much.”

“My son, he had so much life in front of him. My youngest son. They killed him,” she said. “Why is such a good person killed? I won’t forget him. He was so strong and independent.”

“We will win.”

They drove out of the old downtown, past the dull apartment blocks, factories and smokestacks at the edge of the city, through a checkpoint made of sandbags and old tires. A row of Molotov cocktails stood nearby.

“Invader go f__k yourself,” read a billboard hung over the road, which took them into the gently rolling hills to the southwest, where smoke billowed from bonfires and the sun glinted off silvery church roofs.

Just before a checkpoint, they veered off to Vushuvanyi’s home village near Khodoriv, where a cluster of simple houses and a school surrounded a wooden church, and a local said a common career path was to move to Poland for better wages.

The mourners parked their cars and proceeded on foot, trailing the hearse past villagers clutching Ukrainian flags who lined the road on one knee with candles in front of them.

Leading the procession were flag carriers waving Ukrainian and nationalist banners. Priests followed, and a choir singing a requiem.

They made their way up a rise to Vushuvanyi’s yellow brick family home, which had a small orchard, a well and, out back, a garden plot.

As a kid, Vushuvanyi was often seen playing basketball and soccer, or running, said Miroslava Horin, who taught at his school (but was not his teacher).

She said his grandfather fought in the Second World War and Vushuvanyi, like his family, was patriotic about Ukraine. The Russians have his blood on their hands, she said. “He will live forever in our hearts.”

Vushuvanyi joined the military in 2014, the priest said. He served initially for three years, but returned to the army and was “fighting for the independence of Ukraine,” he said.

“Hero, hero,” his grandmother moaned. “My grandson, it’s you who should put me in the ground.”

The coffin was carried into the village church so locals could pay their respects. Cptn. Roman Biliakovskiy stood outside smoking and remembering Vushuvanyi as “a very positive, happy person.”

“He liked to make jokes,” he said.

The pallbearers exited the church, and as they carried Vushuvanyi to the cemetery, Capt. Biliakovskiy waved down a reporter and offered him a ride because there was more he wanted to say.

Unconvinced the world appreciated the gravity of the moment, he said the Russian invasion was the start of the Third World War. “They’re not going to stop, they’re going to go to Europe.”

He said his father met Putin in the 1980s, when the Russian president was a KGB officer, although Biliakovskiy said that was before he was born. He urged Putin to abandon Ukraine or face the consequences.

“He should stop this war, otherwise I will kill him,” the captain said. “I will try to find Putin’s mother and daughter and kill them,” he added. “He killed my brother.”

They lowered Vushuvanyi into a grave beside the rusted metal fence that separates the village cemetery from the road. Beyond a row of birches, farm fields were plowed for the spring season.

His casket was wrapped in the Ukrainian flag. His maroon beret was on top. The soldiers fired shots into the air. His father was stoic, wiping his nose with a tissue.

The men shovelled dry soil over him and the priest consoled the villagers, asking them to pray for the soldiers who were not letting their enemies get near them.

“We will win this war and we will unite,” he said.

Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca