Ukraine volunteer team recovers bodies from front line in refrigerated van amid war

A Ukrainian volunteer team is recovering bodies from the front line and transporting them home in a refrigerated van, according to a report describing the work of a crew led by Mark Zydga. The team operates across areas affected by the war with Russia, where it says it must move through dangerous zones to collect the dead. The account says the volunteers are now focused on returning fallen soldiers to their families after first beginning as an evacuation group for civilians.

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Zydga, who is 27, said the crew has to deal with the smell of the bodies, damaged remains and the emotional strain of handling the dead. He said he must open body bags to read how each person died, and described the distress of handing bodies back to parents. The report says the team has picked up hundreds of fallen soldiers and uses a moving refrigerator to keep the bodies from decomposing during transport.

The volunteers are said to have started their work when Russian troops and tanks entered Ukraine more than four years ago, initially helping move civilians away from the east of the country. As the war developed into trench warfare and battlefield deaths increased, the group shifted toward body recovery because many of the dead were not being brought home in a timely or preserved condition. The report says the team, known as On The Shield, later bought a refrigerator van with support from their church.

The work highlights one of the less visible consequences of the war: the recovery, identification and return of the dead. In conflicts, the handling of bodies is not only a logistical task but also a humanitarian and legal one, because families often wait for confirmation before burial and mourning can be delayed when remains are not recovered. The report suggests that the volunteers are filling a gap where formal systems have struggled to keep pace with battlefield losses.

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The article also places the team's work in the wider context of Ukraine's eastern front, where the fighting has produced repeated losses and difficult recovery conditions. It says the volunteers travel long distances across the country, making repeated round trips of about 1,900 miles, or 3,000 kilometres, to collect bodies. Their mission began in the west of Ukraine, near the border with Poland, but now takes them into areas much closer to the fighting.

Zydga said some of the dead were friends and classmates, underlining how the war has affected local communities as well as soldiers at the front. He said people in their town began asking the team to bring bodies back after learning they were travelling east. The report says the group's aim is to give the dead what it describes as a final honourable send-off, while also easing the burden on families waiting for burial.

What remains unclear from the report is the full scale of the recovery effort, how many bodies the team has handled in total, and whether any official military or state body coordinates its work. It is also not clear how many similar volunteer groups are operating elsewhere in Ukraine. The broader issue is likely to remain significant as the war continues and the need to recover, identify and repatriate the dead persists.

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