On Aug. 8, Ukraine bid farewell to Oleksii Yukov, the founder and leader of the “Platsdarm” search team. Yukov dedicated his life to finding those who died in wars and bringing them home. As a teenager, he helped identify soldiers who had died on Ukrainian soil after World War I and World War II.
After 2014, with the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, “Platsdarm” searched for the remains of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers near the frontline and in the territories Ukraine has liberated.
“When you bring the fallen soldiers home, and when their parents call you and say, ‘Thank you for bringing our child back to us,’ you realize how important this work is. Because without their bodies, the puzzle of life for their parents and relatives doesn’t come together,” said Oleksii.
We worked with Oleksii’s team in 2025. At the time, he told us that in just one body swap, thanks to “Platsdarm” and similar organizations, Ukraine had managed to recover more than 500 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers from the Russian-occupied territories.
Yukov was killed on Aug. 5: his car hit a Russian landmine. He was 40 years old.
The first farewell ceremony was on Aug. 7 in Mykilske, Donetsk Oblast, closer to Yukov’s hometown of Sloviansk. It was canceled due to the threat of a Russian attack. We spoke with soldiers near Mykilske. Soldiers said that, because information about the ceremony had been published online, Russian forces had already “marked” the village for glide bomb strikes.
On Aug. 8, the ceremony was held on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in the center of Kyiv.
On August 6, a petition calling for Oleksii Yukov to be awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine was submitted to the President of Ukraine. It has already garnered the 25,000 votes required for Volodymyr Zelenskyy to consider it.
Watch our video report showing the work of Oleksii and his team here.
Read also
- ‘Now, the dead are orphaned’ — In memory of Oleksii Yukov, a man who brought fallen soldiers home
Subscribe to news from Kharkiv, Ukraine
Most important stories from the frontline region
