The bodies of the two Ukrainian soldiers lay motionless in a field for months. Around them were bloodstains and their rifles.
The soldiers’ relatives identified their bodies from aerial footage gathered by drone. Although excruciating to watch, it seemed clear: The two men — Pvt. Serhiy Matsiuk and Pvt. Andriy Zaretsky — were dead. Yet more than four months later, the Ukrainian military still lists them as missing, even though subsequent drone footage provided by a fellow soldier weeks later showed them still lying there.
"I want to have his grave, where I can come and cry all this out properly,” said Zaretsky’s wife, Anastasia, 31, who has been looking for closure since he was killed in November in the Zaporizhzhia region in Ukraine’s south.