Full Breakdown
Oleksiy Yukov: Volunteer “Collector of Souls” Killed While Recovering War Dead
8/8/2026, 10:33:22 PM
Final Service and Fatal Incident
On August 5, Oleksiy Yukov, a 40-year-old volunteer who spent two decades exhuming and identifying war casualties, was killed by a landmine while attempting to exhume a body in the Donetsk frontline. An Orthodox Christian service was held at the Cathedral of Saint Volodymyr in central Kyiv on Saturday, drawing thousands of mourners. His remains were later taken to Kyiv’s main Maidan Square for a public farewell.
Background and Mission
Yukov founded the volunteer organization Platsdarm (“bridgehead”) in 2014 after the Russian-backed separatist conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine. Earlier, as a teenager, he had searched World-War-II battlefields for Soviet and German remains, an experience that shaped his lifelong commitment to dignified burials. A former martial-arts instructor from the Donbas region, he organized small teams that entered mined fields, forests and ruined towns to locate both Ukrainian and Russian soldiers, as well as civilians, and to return them to families for proper interment.
Methods and Risks
Platsdarm volunteers begin each mission by surveying terrain with drones, then dividing the area into grids for systematic probing with metal detectors. Bomb-disposal experts are called in to neutralize any explosive devices before bodies are recovered. Over time, the work grew more hazardous: by 2025 drones and artillery made movement “almost impossible,” and volunteers routinely lay prone for seconds after attaching cords to suspected booby-trapped bodies. Yukov himself survived a mine blast in 2022 that cost him an eye and a leg, yet he returned to the front lines while still recuperating.
Impact and Scale
Ukrainian media reported that Platsdarm’s teams have recovered thousands of bodies throughout the conflict, including both Ukrainian and Russian servicemen. The war that began in February 2022 has produced hundreds of thousands of fatalities on both sides, adding to the 13,000 people killed between 2014 and 2022 during the earlier phase of fighting. Recovered remains are often exchanged between Ukraine and Russia as part of periodic humanitarian swaps.
Verbatim Quotes
- “I always thought nothing would happen to him,” — Diana
- “He brought back the souls of our missing loved ones.” — Olena Tropina
- “For us, it's very important that every guy and girl comes home,” — Getty Images Oleksiy Yukov
- “We are checking the neck for an ID tag, a cross on a chain, or anything else. Here's a big cross,” — Getty Images Oleksiy Yukov
- “Before, we could move under cloud cover or rain. Now it's too risky. We've been hit before.” — Getty Images Oleksiy Yukov
Conflicting Reports & Gaps
Sources agree that Platsdarm has recovered “thousands of bodies,” but no precise figure is provided, leaving the exact scale of the operation unverified. Additionally, while Ukrainian media cite the team’s role in body exchanges, independent confirmation of the number of exchanges or the proportion of Ukrainian versus Russian remains remains absent.
