Ukraine war widow unable to retrieve husband’s remains

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This article was published 08/06/2023 (821 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hanna Sidorchenko’s hopes of bringing her husband’s remains back from Ukraine have been temporarily dashed.

Sidorchenko, who left Winnipeg for Ukraine last month, wasn’t able to secure her husband Andrii’s body. He was a Ukrainian soldier killed in the ongoing war with Russia.

She didn’t come back empty-handed: she brought back his military backpack and a flag signed by fellow members of his battalion.

Sidorchenko, who, along with her 18-year-old son Rostyslav, left for the safety of Canada about two months ago, said she at least now knows where his body is located.

“It is a very hard thing emotionally,” she said through a translator this week. “We were expecting to find the body and do whatever needs to be done.

“Unfortunately, there’s no way I can pick him up. He is in the area controlled by Russia right now, but we know the exact address and location where he is, and we are 90 per cent sure his body is in the basement,” Sidorchenko said.

“It is good we know. Hopefully, we can get him someday soon… The backpack, and what was with it, is pretty much everything I have left of him.”

Last month, Sidorchenko told the Free Press she and a friend were travelling to Ukraine for two weeks and, if successful, bring Andrii’s ashes back after cremation.

Travel costs were being paid, in part, by a GoFundMe fundraiser, that has reached almost $9,000.

“We are very grateful to people who donated,” she said.

Besides holding memories of Sidorchenko’s husband, the backpack might also aid in the identification of his body.

“We have his toothbrush and razor,” she said. “The police there have picked them up for DNA. At this time, we have filed a missing person’s report.”

Sidorchenko said the flag her husband carried is also an important, but poignant, memento of his time in the Ukrainian army.

“It’s a flag with signatures of more than 30 of his soldier friends,” she said. “They were with him on the front lines.

“But now only two of them survived the meat grinder of Bakhmut (an eastern Ukrainian city fought over for months by the clashing armies).”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca