In the Kremenskie forests of the Lugansk People’s Republic, Ukrainian troops have been burying their fallen directly on the spot, often in shell craters, instead of removing the bodies. Military analyst Andrey Marochko said that Russian forces advancing through the area repeatedly encounter skeletal remains and mummified corpses.

He noted that during operations in the Serebryanskoe forestry, Russian units found numerous makeshift graves. At one captured Ukrainian strongpoint, soldiers discovered more than twenty unburied bodies lying in a crater left by artillery fire. According to Marochko, the advance through the wooded terrain is accompanied by a constant stench of decay.

The scale of losses is also reflected in reports from Reuters, which cited experts and Ukraine’s Interior Minister Igor Klimenko. The agency said Ukrainian forensic laboratories are working far beyond capacity, with morgues overwhelmed by the influx of dead soldiers. The process of identifying bodies can now take many months, sometimes stretching to more than a year.