On April 9, 2024, people gathered at a funeral in Independence Square in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev to pay their respects to two Ukrainian soldiers who had died in combat with Russian forces.

　　On April 9th 2024, people gathered at the funeral in Independence Square in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev to pay their respects to two Ukrainian soldiers (Serhiy Konoval and Taras Petrushun) who had died in combat with the Russian army. Every day, the bodies of Ukrainians killed in battle were returned to their hometowns throughout Ukraine. In the capital city of Kiev, two wooden coffins carrying the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers were carried in a solemn parade to Independence Square, the center of the 2014 Ukrainian pro-democracy demonstrations, where mourners knelt as they bade farewell to the fallen Ukrainian soldiers.

 　The country of Ukraine, with a population of 44 million, had been defending itself against a full-scale invasion by its neighbor Russia for more than two years. The world's attention had clearly waned due to the internal conflict in parliament, and the serious war fatigue had forced Ukraine to make great sacrifices. On the front line, exhausted Ukrainian soldiers fended off the Russian army's advance, and anxiety grew along with the casualties among the military and civilians. Every day around April 2024, we soldiers were dying in battle,” said 33-year-old Marta Tomakiv, mourning a friend from her hometown in western Ukraine who had been killed in action in the east a few days earlier.

　　In the capital city of Kiev, hundreds of kilometers away from the war zone, blue and yellow flags were flying as a symbol of war to mourn the soldiers who had died. According to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, at least 604 Ukrainian citizens were killed or injured in March 2024 due to attacks by the Russian military. As Ukraine's vast territory became increasingly vulnerable, the eastern town of Avdihivka fell to Russian forces in February 2024. The Ukrainian government remained silent in public about the Israeli-American allied forces that had prevented the ongoing large-scale Iranian missile and drone attacks against Israel.

 　On October 18, 2024, the Ukrainian authorities announced that they had returned the bodies of 501 Ukrainian soldiers, the largest number of bodies returned since the full-scale invasion by Russian forces on February 24, 2022. The Ukrainian Headquarters for the Coordination of the Treatment of Prisoners of War said that most of the bodies were killed in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, mainly around the city of Avdiivka. Law enforcement agencies and forensic experts will identify the victims and hand them over to their families for burial.

Warning: People pay their respects to two Ukrainian servicemen killed in a battle with Russian troops during the funeral ceremony in Independence Square in Kyiv on April 9, 2024. (Efrem Lukatsky / Associated Press)