Named at last — how Ukraine gives fallen heroes back their names

They bring back the bags. Ukraine gives them names.

Outside a police station in Kyiv two women wait like clockwork — midlife, quiet, clutching folders. They do not talk. They watch the door. They are waiting for the same thing as everyone else who comes here since the exchanges began: a name.

Olha Sydorenko is the woman they come to. Sydorenko is the investigator who matches bodies to people. She looks at papers, at teeth charts, at scraps of evidence — and she gives the dead their names.

From petty crime to the front line of grief

Sydorenko’s path to this work began far from war. A 33-year-old investigator who once handled thefts, she was in Luhansk on assignment when Russia launched its full invasion. Instead of going home on the night of Feb. 23–24, 2022, she returned to work, took a weapon, and began long days at checkpoints and at scenes of bombardment.

When Kyiv Oblast was de-occupied, exhumed bodies — civilian and military — began arriving at city morgues. That’s when Sydorenko’s job changed. It became a race to identify, register and return the dead.

The three decisive tests

Police and forensic teams follow a strict, brutal logic. Each body earns a file and a number in the morgue. Then experts run three main tests that, together, can point to an identity:

• Fingerprints — where possible, specialists use chemicals to recover prints even when body decomposition has started.

• Dental records — teeth survive long after flesh does, so ante-mortem dental x-rays are gold evidence — but only if these records exist. Ukraine does not require soldiers to file dental scans before service, a gap that can slow down the matching procedures.

• DNA — the final arbiter: biological samples from bodies are compared with material from relatives. A match can bring certainty, or at least statistical weight.

Fingerprints — where possible, specialists use chemicals to recover prints even when body decomposition has started.

Dental records — teeth survive long after flesh does, so ante-mortem dental x-rays are gold evidence — but only if these records exist. Ukraine does not require soldiers to file dental scans before service, a gap that can slow down the matching procedures.

DNA — the final arbiter: biological samples from bodies are compared with material from relatives. A match can bring certainty, or at least statistical weight.

“Ideally you need all three,” says a specialist at the Main Bureau of Forensic Examinations.

“Combine them and you can be sure. Rely on one alone and some families still won’t believe it.”

Ihor Kalantai, who now heads the police unit for missing persons and unidentified bodies, says the challenge is staggering: Russia hands bodies over in terrible condition; morgues are full; the number of forensic experts is far too small.

“Most bodies can’t be identified by sight,” he said bluntly.

Morgues under strain, heartbreak in numbers

Bodies arrive in sealed bags, loaded into trucks or refrigerated rail cars. Sometimes a single bag contains fragments, sometimes parts that belong to several people.

“We once opened a bag and had to lay out fragments from eight different people,” a forensic expert who asked not to be named told NV. The work is technically exhausting and morally crushing.

Since 2022 police have collected more than 155,641 biological samples from relatives searching for missing people. That figure is samples, not lost people — but it shows the scale.

In 2025 alone, more than 10,000 bodies of fallen Ukrainian fighters were returned; this past summer some 6,000 arrived from Russia.

When DNA hits a match, the relief is visceral. Families can request repeat tests for their own certainty. “Sometimes a second DNA test lets relatives accept it,” Sydorenko said.

“It brings peace.”

When there is no match, bodies are buried under numbers. Some remain in morgues for years, waiting for someone to come forward with a reference sample.

Paperwork, patience, duty

Every recovered body passes through a chain: registration at the morgue, full forensic autopsy to determine cause and time of death, fingerprint and dental comparison, and DNA sampling — all tied to a prosecutor’s order. The national database sits at the Ministry’s forensic center; it is the ledger that can turn a number into a name.

Sydorenko keeps the line of waiting relatives close to her heart.

“My own family is at the front,” she shared.

“I know what it means when someone doesn’t answer. I understand the worry.”

Her phone rings constantly — morning, noon, night. She answers. This is her mission: to make sure the men who stood for the country do not lie nameless.

A grim backlog — and small victories

Some bodies came in as early as June 15, 2022, and lay unclaimed until relatives escaped occupied territory and submitted DNA samples. Then, finally, matches appeared.

“We will find the names for every body,” Sydorenko said. “They must be buried with dignity, with a name.”

The scale of the task remains vast. Morgues are full, the number of forensic experts is too small, and the flow of returned bodies continues. But each match — each fingerprint that fits, each dental chart that aligns, each DNA result that closes the circle — turns an anonymous loss into a person. It gives families a single and terrible thing they need: a name.

AFU General Staff data indicated that more than 10,000 bodies of fallen fighters were returned to Ukraine in 2025. Just this summer, 6,000 deceased Ukrainian soldiers arrived home from Russia. The Interior Ministry does not disclose the total number of bodies returned since February 2022.