Killed at front but not in reports: how system forces families of soldiers to investigate circumstances of their deaths on their own
For more than two months, the wife of soldier Andrii Vertiukh, who fought in the Pokrovsk direction, tried to get an official investigation into the circumstances of her husband’s death. The situation was complicated by the fact that he served in one brigade and was for service in another to perform a combat mission.
Both brigades did not conduct such an investigation, treating the soldier as missing, even though two of his comrades-in-arms who were with him at the position told his wife what happened and recorded their testimony on video. In fact, Nataliia contacted our editorial office not only to tell her story but for the sake of people like her - people who have lost their loved ones and are also forced to go through a similar path.
Nataliia Vertiukh is a lawyer by profession. She did a painstaking job collecting testimonies from her husband's comrades-in-arms, establishing the chronology of events on the day he died. However, all this work should have been done by the government agencies responsible for this. She told Censor.NET about what she found out in an interview.
- Nataliia, when did your husband go to serve?
- When my husband received the draft notice, he did not tell anyone. First, he passed the MMC, and only then he announced to me and my son at dinner that he was going to serve. He was a patriot and always said that if he received a draft notice, he would not look for any reasons to avoid service. So at the end of May, he went to serve.
- What military specialty did he receive?
- He really wanted to join the 47th Brigade, because when he was passing the MMC, he met their recruiter and he offered him to be a driver, because he had a civilian specialty and a lot of experience. This brigade was very interested in recruiting him. They wrote a letter of request. But he was sent to the 152nd Brigade. And since he was a junior sergeant and there were no positions in his specialty, he decided to study to become a combat medic. He said he would save people's lives.
After that training, he went to the Pokrovsk direction. And on September 3, as far as I learned from the deputy brigade commander, there was an order to assign a certain number of soldiers to another brigade, the 151st Brigade, to perform a combat mission. And in the evening of September 7, he and two other comrades in arms were brought to an observation post in one of the villages.
- Did he write to you or how do you know this?
- My husband wrote me a message in the evening that they were being transferred somewhere. I didn't know where exactly. I suspect he did not know either.
I know what happened next from the stories of the guys who were with him at that observation point and who managed to survive. It was in the village of Hrodivka, and they were housed in a private house.
No one lived in this house, but there were chickens and two dogs in the yard. One dog ran away at night because there was an explosion and it was obviously scared. It was untied. And the other one was tied up and stayed put.
In the morning, some man came to the house, either the owner or the person who looks after the house, to feed the animals.
He showed my husband, whom he saw through the window, that the enemy was trying to get in and pointed out where they were hiding. After he left, Russian soldiers came to the yard. A close combat started.
According to one of his comrades-in-arms, the guys killed them all. But then there was hit, and my husband, who was still outside at that moment, was wounded in the neck. His comrades said: "He ran into the house, held his neck, bleeding." They provided first aid. But the injury was incompatible with life, and every minute he was getting worse. He pulled out his phone, handed it to his comrade-in-arms and called four numbers. I know these numbers, he told me them as soon as he joined the army.
This is the password to his cell phone. He told his comrades: "I realized I had to give it to you." He did give it to me later.
Describing what happened then, he said that when the man's mouth was bleeding, they put him on the floor and checked his pulse. There was no pulse. They closed his eyes...
Then more hits started. One of them hit the house. Part of the house was destroyed. Then the drones flew in.
The guys said they could not leave the house, it was dangerous.
They say they sat there for about 4 hours. And when it started to get dark, another woman came to the yard with the same man who had fed the dog in the morning. She started screaming: "Oh my God, what have they done to the house!" The house was already half-ruined by then. I suspect that the owners, who had moved out, actually came.
The shelling started again, and this time it hit the neighboring house. And everything started to burn around.
The guys decided to get out of there. One of them told me: "Honestly, I checked your husband's pulse again, he was already cold by then. I covered him with a baby blanket and we left." There was nothing else at hand.
The guys moved first to another position in the same village, then to another one, because Hrodivka was being captured very quickly.
The guys took 11 days to reach their positions. They were accompanied by soldiers from other positions. At some point, all their walkie-talkies and phones were dead. They could not even tell where they were.
For the last three days, they were hiding in some basement, with no food and almost no water. But the shelling did not stop, and they decided: come what may. And under fire, they started moving on. Eventually, they reached a settlement where they were able to charge their phones and report to the brigade where they were.
- Did they tell you that your husband had died?
- My husband's comrades-in-arms told me that around 11pm, while they were still in that village house, he reported on walkie-talkie that there was a dead man among them. And he named my husband. That is, the fact of his death was already confirmed on 8 September.
But on September 16 - the guys had not yet contacted the brigade - I received a message from the District TCR that my husband had been missing in the village of Hrodivka, Pokrovsk district, Donetsk region, since September 8.
The next day, I went to the police to register a statement and start an investigation. As it should be according to the procedure. When I had an extract from the criminal proceedings, I started registering my husband's data wherever possible. Because I didn't know what happened to him. International Red Cross, SSU website for searching for people, Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War...
And on September 22, I went to the District TCR of the Desnianskyi district of Kyiv, because I was given a memo when I received the notice, which said what I had to do. The last of the points there was that I had to go to the District TCR and submit an application. It was an application for financial assistance for a missing person.
At that time, I already knew that my husband was dead. Because their company commander told me that they had taken the guys, but my husband was not among them. Of course, he knew everything, but he obviously wanted his comrades in arms to tell me personally about everything that had happened. So he didn't give any specifics, just said that he was either wounded or killed. It was a vague answer. But he gave me the phone numbers of the guys who were with the husband at the time.
At that time, one of the husband's comrades-in-arms was taken to the hospital because he was wounded. The other was in a military unit. I talked to them in turn, accordingly. Both of them told me what I am telling you now. Therefore, by the time I arrived at the District TCR, I knew the information that he had died, but there was no body. He is still in the dilapidated or even destroyed building, which was also on fire. Perhaps someday, after the liberation of the territory, we will be able to return his body. At least I hope so.
If the body is not pulled out or if it burned down with the house, it is a dead end.
- What happened next? Why hasn't the fact of your husband's death been documented yet?
- I waited for the investigation of all the circumstances, for the paperwork, hoping that the actions of our state authorities were legitimate. But a month passed and no action was taken. Perhaps I would have waited longer if my compadre hadn't advised me to call the District TCR.
It turned out that no one was doing anything. One military unit shifted responsibility to another, arguing that they should not conduct an internal investigation because my husband was assigned to another unit. That unit also refused to do anything until there was a request from the brigade in which my husband was registered. I contacted the military unit to which he is assigned again, and they say that they have sent requests, but have not received any answers.
I decided to involve a lawyer. We made a lawyer's request to the first and second military units. In response, the one where he is supposed to be serving repeated the same explanation and attached a copy of the request to the other unit that they had sent there. But the request was dated October 30. That is, they made the request only after they received the lawyer's request. They didn't do anything before that, they just sent me to each other like they were playing soccer.
I want to achieve the supremacy of the law so that people who have lost their relatives do not suffer because of someone's indifference, incompetence or irresponsibility. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who have lost their relatives in this war.
To get justice, I filed complaints with the Office of the President, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, the General Staff of the Armed Forces, the Headquarters of the Armed Forces, and the Ministry of Defense.
- Since there are witnesses who saw how your husband died, can you go to court and establish the fact of his death in court?
- The witnesses will have to appear in person. And these people are at the front. I don't know if they will be able to appear.
There is an option that witnesses can appear before a notary and certify their signatures on statements with their testimony. But I'm not sure that this will work in court.
In addition, even if you go to court, you need to get a document on the results of the internal investigation. This will be demanded in court.
- Nataliia, do you have children?
- Son.
- How old is he?
- My son is 23 years old.
- Does he not serve?
- He joined ranks as a volunteer fighter and signed a contract in July this year.
Since his husband died, he can terminate the contract, but he says he has no moral right to do so.
- How do you take it? It's not easy after what you've been through.
- It's constant fear, constant anxiety. I'm still coping without a psychologist, and I hope I'll manage. But it is insanely hard.
- Probably at night is the most terrible time. When you seem to want to sleep, but you think about what's going on...
- The worst time is when you wake up and your son hasn't been online yet. I check every five minutes to see if he's online. I check again in an hour or two.
And I constantly read the news about where there was shelling, where there was some kind of danger.
My son is busy, and I can't bother him, ask him how he is. So I try to monitor the situation this way.
We have a very patriotic family, and my son has always been interested in history. Especially the history of Ukraine, which my husband and I, children of the Soviet Union, did not study because we were not allowed to study it at that time. But he is interested in all of this, and perhaps this is why he has such a deep patriotism. Or perhaps because we are such parents. My husband went to serve with the belief that everything in our army was right, everything was legal.
He kept saying: "We must win, everything will be fine.... Who else but us... It's my duty...".
When he went to study to become a combat medic, he did very well. In practice, too. He was strong and in good physical shape, despite the fact that he had to be 50 years old.
- What do the law enforcement officers who are supposed to establish the circumstances under which he went missing tell you? Do you communicate with them?
- I recorded the stories of my husband's comrades-in-arms on a dictaphone. I understand that this is indirect evidence, but just in case, our conversation was recorded. They were very apologetic that they could not get my husband out and promised to testify if necessary.
I also asked them to write handwritten statements with a brief summary of the facts. They wrote and mailed them to me. Then they recorded their stories on video.
And when one of them was in Kyiv, I asked him to go to the police and give a statement. A report was also drawn up that he had identified the other soldier, as I had asked him to do.
This is how I collect evidence because I'm not sure we'll be able to pull the body out.
I don't know how the judges will treat them. I hope they will be understanding. Because the story is scary and honest.
You know, Tania, I have a painful dream, but it's the only thing that can be done.
The house we live in is located above the road. Often people used to bring guys who died at the front along this road and say: "A killed warrior ". And my husband, when he wasn't serving, used to walk his dog outside almost every morning. And every time they brought in one of the fallen soldiers, he kneeled down. So I dream that he would be taken to the funeral in the same way. He deserved it.
From the editors office: After speaking with Nataliia Vertiukh, we contacted the Main Investigation Department of the National Police and the Central Department for the Protection of the Rights of Servicemen of the Ministry of Defense. They responded by promising to look into the situation and send appropriate requests to conduct an internal investigation and establish the circumstances of what happened to her husband. At the time of publication of the interview, she told us that she had received a call from the 151st Brigade, where her husband was assigned to perform a combat mission, and was told that an internal investigation would be conducted.
But we will continue to follow this story in order to achieve the same supremacy of the law for which Andrii Vertiukh paid the ultimate price.
Tetiana Bodnia, Censor.NET
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