Interview: Nataliya Yefimkina
“My name is Aleksej Jukov, I live in Slowjansk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, until 2014 I searched for the fallen soldiers from World War I and II, after 2014 when the fighting started here I work for the humanitarian organization Black Tulip and now, 8 years after the beginning of the fighting here, we continue the work, we search and evacuate the bodies of the fallen.
It is similar, only the quantity is different, and it has become much more dangerous, it is difficult to make agreements, because nothing is kept.
Our car was shot at despite the agreement that we could pick up the bodies. Thank God we stayed alive. We managed to get out of there in time.
They shot directly at our vehicle, which had the red cross painted on it and cargo 200.
It is very dangerous to move around because everything is constantly changing and you have to follow the news all the time which locality, what is happening there, is there shooting or not and you have to keep in contact with the local people who live there so that you can get there more safely as a group to pick up the bodies fallen.
The other day we made it out and got five army men from the occupied territory.
All of us men who have here evacuated our families and the men all came back, took all away, and all stay here.
We have seen wounds, head injuries, body parts, and torn-off pieces of the body. You can’t get used to it, but the special thing is that you understand that everything can be repaired, rebuilt, restored, only you can’t bring back life to anyone once the person has died. That’s why you have to try with all your strength that the person stays alive and with us, it is just so that we deal with the dead.
But this is just the beginning, we understand that there are still many bodies there. We are called on the hotline, on my private number by parents and the army personnel, that here and there still the dead ones remained and one would have to get them somehow.
And we try to find out where exactly they are, who from the local people, from the governments there, can help us.
Because we are simple volunteers, we do all this just out of our own enthusiasm and our own conscience, just our own conscience, and in fact nobody protects us, and if we get killed, then just as good guys.
There is evacuation by the government, they pick up the dead from the places here, bring them and pick them up, but they are army people, nobody will let them on the territory not controlled by Ukraine, only us volunteers, as in 2014.
This war affects everyone, including Europe and in general the whole world, but it is very difficult to understand that you yourself remain alone with this war, one to one. The help that comes from Europe and the United States is very important because in fact, we are alone with the enemy.
It’s very hard and very difficult, but we are holding on, we are Ukrainians.”