Collecting the dead in Ukraine

The Russian soldier lay where he had fallen. His plastic combat belt and flak jacket were still intact, but his legs were splayed at an unnatural angle, and where his face and scalp had once been there was now only a skull with dark stains on it.  

Oleksiy, leader of the Black Tulip, a small team of Ukrainian men who collect bodies from the country’s eastern battlefields, gingerly tied a rope around the decaying corpse. ‘These bodies are sometimes booby-trapped,’ he said. ‘We have to be careful.’  

We all walked 50 or 60 yards up the muddy track we had come down and crouched. Then Oleksiy, bending low, gave the rope a tug. This time there was no explosion. Denys, 21, who was wearing a baseball cap with ‘Donbas’ written on it, picked up the skull which had detached from the body and reunited the two.