Russians seek answers over hundreds missing after Ukraine's 2024 incursion

Yuri Tkachev, identified as the caput of one section colony council, joined volunteers who scoured streets and nearby fields to recover civilian bodies. The volunteers covered the cost of body bags and supplies for the vans used in the evacuations, relying on personal funds or donations rather than government support. Although officials met with the search teams several times during the second half of 2025, relatives said the encounters yielded little practical result. Lyubov had been searching for her mother’s remains until she visited the mortuary in October while traveling to the designated superior Kursk. There she posed the question, “I conscionable asked: 'A pistillate calved successful 1949 from the colony of Darino – are determination immoderate unidentified bodies?'" The official turned his laptop screen toward her, and she instantly recognized her deceased parent in a photograph dated April 2025. The image showed the woman lying on her side in the street, knees bent. Lyubov avoided looking too closely but identified her mother’s face and the aged jumper she had worn while working. She had submitted a DNA sample in January, only to be told it had been lost, leaving her mother’s body unidentified in the mortuary for several months. Although she had hoped to bury her parent in their home village, that option remains unavailable; the remains have been cremated and the ashes now reside in Lyubov’s apartment in Belgorod, roughly 100 miles away. Lyubov expressed bitterness toward the authorities, stating they failed to stop the incursion, neglected to evacuate residents when possible, and convinced the public that the situation was not serious. When approached by the BBC for comment, there was no response from the Kursk governor, Russia’s human rights commissioner, or the Russian Red Cross. Ukraine’s Territorial Defence Forces and its human rights commissioner asserted that every civilian evacuated from Kursk had been transferred to Russian authorities. Reflecting on past cross‑border trips, Lyubov recalled riding her motorcycle into Ukraine to purchase sausages, yarn, and crystal cream. She summed up the loss with the exact words, “We went to spot them, and they came to spot us. And present not 1 of these villages exists immoderate more.”