Where families find closure and the dead regain their names
ODESSA. This is where the remains of the fallen, exchanged with Russia, are brought.
Updated 17:07 | Published 13:42
Nameless bodies—people who had long been missing, leaving their families unable to grieve.
In a bleak rail yard, they are given back their memories and their names.
- The bodies of fallen soldiers are transported to Odessa for identification and return to their families, following an exchange with Russia.
- Autopsies and the identification of remains are carried out under difficult conditions; many bodies are in poor condition or incomplete.
- Identification via DNA samples and dental records provides family members with closure and a place to mourn their loved ones.
With a screech, the sliding door of the worn, gray railway carriage—its walls scarred by shrapnel—opens.
It feels like stepping into a film set during the Second World War.
An icy mist spills out from the refrigerated carriage. It is minus 18 degrees Celsius.
White body bags are stacked one atop another, row after row, in multiple layers.
These are bodies—remains. The sheer number of the dead is difficult to comprehend.
Some are remarkably well-preserved, while many have decomposed beyond recognition; most are missing body parts.
Sons, brothers, and fathers—all of whom have been missed by anxious relatives. Here, they will regain their identities.
Tetiana Papizh is the head of the morgues in Odessa. She is the person responsible for identification. She moves about unconcernedly among the remains laid out on steel tables. This is her daily life; since May 2024, they have received over 3,000 bodies.
“We never know what we’re going to receive. Sometimes a single body bag contains three feet and three hands. We truly have no idea what we’re getting until it arrives.”
Tetiana stands in stark contrast to the other forensic specialists, who are dressed in sterile white full-body suits and plastic gloves.
With her long, loose blonde hair, a bright red blouse, and a matching cardigan, she breaks the monochrome palette of this final destination for the dead—as if a bit of color, a touch of life, is needed here.
She checks some data in a database and confirms that the body before us has just been identified. A family no longer has to wait.
“The remains we handle are often in poor condition—sometimes just individual body parts. The Russian forces don’t bother to store the remains properly,” she says.
Whether friend or for, death always smells the same: heavy and stifling—unlike anything else. It clings to your nostrils, your hair, and your clothes.
It irritates me when riots are described as a “war zone.” No—*this* is a war zone. The grief, the stench, the inescapable sense of loss, and the despair.
From the railway carriages, the white body bags are moved to a makeshift tent set up beside the tracks.
Staff in protective suits place the bodies onto autopsy tables. One of the bodies is so well-preserved that they can still make out old scars and tattoos. Another one has to be pried loose from its deep-frozen state. A skull with a few stray hairs still attached, along with some scattered skeletal remains. Dried-on mud. A single boot with a foot inside.
“Can you pass me the knife?” one team member asks a colleague.
He carefully cuts through the cheek of a deep-frozen yet well-preserved body. The face appears to have melted together; the features are gone, as if sculpted from brown clay. He pulls back flaps of skin to reach the teeth and cleans them with alcohol. The teeth are X-rayed so they can be compared against a database. Then, a DNA sample is taken.
Anxious relatives of missing soldiers provide their own samples, ensuring a quick match should their loved one be found. Other methods for identifying the deceased include dental records, distinguishing physical marks, or—if the remains are in sufficiently good condition—fingerprints.
Another bag of remains is brought into the tent.
“It’s like a game of pick-up sticks,” someone remarks.
“Forgive me, but you need a bit of dark humor to do this kind of work,” says Tetiana. She takes a drag from a cigarette; the smoke offers some relief from the air, which is heavy with the stench of decaying corpses.
Large puddles form beneath the autopsy tables as the bodies thaw and fluids drain away. I can feel the moisture seeping into my shoes. Bodily fluids.
Once a body has been examined, it is carefully labeled. It is then moved to a refrigerated shipping container, where identified remains are kept until they are collected by the military to be returned to the families.
For families whit missing loved ones, it is an ordeal. Iliya, a father of two, was 40 years old when he disappeared early in the war. His family was told he had been killed, but it took a year and a half to recover his body.
“It was a mix of grief and confusion. They said he was dead, but we couldn’t know for sure until we actually had his body,” says his widow, Natalia Motorna.
“The children kept asking if he was really dead. Why couldn’t we bury him? And if he had fallen in battle, why was there no grave to visit?” she says.
His body was initially in Russian-occupied territory, and it took a long time before it could be identified using his daughter’s DNA profile.
Natalia describes the wait as an ordeal—a state of living in uncertainty. Even after receiving the news of his death, she still clung to a faint glimmer of hope until she was finally able to bury his body.
“It was a relief when we finally got his body back and it was identified. It doesn’t make the grief any easier, but at least it gives us a grave to visit—a place where I can talk to my husband about things I can’t tell anyone else,” says Natalia.
“I grieve for him just as much, whether his body is here or not—he is gone, after all. But at least we have some closure,” she says.
The autopsy tables are disinfected and scrubbed thoroughly before the next white body bag is lifted onto them. It is an endless, perpetual task—a Sisyphean labor.
“Out of the thousands we have examined so far, 49 remain unidentified.” There can be various reasons for this—for instance, relatives might live abroad or be in occupied territories, making it impossible for them to provide DNA samples, says Tetiana.
One of the bodies placed on the table is easily identified, even though the remains are severely mangled and coming apart. In one of the pockets lies a gleaming ID card—without a single scratch. It shows a man in his forties, gazing into the camera with a clear, steady look. It is impossible to reconcile this image with the brownish remains lying on the cold steel table; yet, this is how he looked when he was alive.
“Still, we can’t rely entirely on the ID card—what if it belonged to a comrade? We have to take a DNA sample regardless,” says Tetiana.
On another body, both the backpack and the protective vest remain. However, the protective plates have been stripped from the vest, and the backpack is nearly empty. The straps of the backpack have dug deep furrows into the upper arms of the deceased.
“Look, an immediate match,” says one of the team members, checking a registry on their phone.
“A 35-year-old man from western Ukraine—now he can finally go home.”
Relieved smiles appear on the faces of the team members.
A gentle rain has begun to fall—little more than a mist. The sky and the railway yard are both shades of gray; Tetiana, in her signal-red attire, provides the only splash of color in an otherwise colorless reality.
It is as if the gray, muted atmosphere merges with the smell—the stench. Yet, what we are experiencing is nothing compared to how bad it could truly be. “It may not be a pleasant working environment, but you should have experienced it this summer when it was 40 degrees. Back then, the bodies decomposed rapidly and the stench was horrific—we had to work wearing gas masks,” says Tetiana.
“Even if it isn’t pleasant, it is important. We help families get answers and find closure. A grave to visit—that is what we owe to everyone who sacrifices their lives, and to their loved ones,” says Tetiana Papizh.
The corpses, the bodies, the remains. This is the reality of war. It is not beautiful, but it provides closure. A chance for the bereaved to grieve—and to move on with their lives.
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