A Ukrainian woman just did something most spouses will never face: She dug up her husband's grave and moved it out of fear the Russians might soon control the soil he was buried in. In a piece for the BBC, correspondent Sarah Rainsford follows Natalia, whose husband, Vitaly, was killed fighting in the Donbas in 2022 and first laid to rest in their hometown of Slovyansk. As Russian forces edge closer, however, with drone and bomb attacks now hitting the town every few days, Natalia has exhumed and reburied Vitaly in Kyiv so that their young daughter can visit his grave without the risk of imminent occupation.
Natalia says her daughter "watches videos of him [and] looks at photos and she loves him very much, even though they never met." The widow also notes that she plans to get pregnant again soon using her late husband's sperm, which they froze at a clinic shortly before he died. She says Vasily—a ceramics artist who joined Ukraine's armed forces when she was still pregnant with their daughter—hadn't wanted to go to war, "but he had do it. He was a patriot."
Rainsford uses Natalia's story to frame Ukraine's grim choices as US-led talks circle the hardest question: What land, if any, can Kyiv afford to give up? Russia controls about a fifth of Ukraine and wants all of the Donbas; Ukraine says no more. Soldiers in a drone unit near Kharkiv tell Rainsford "we need to unite, and fight," even as recruitment slumps and "victory" is redefined as simply preserving statehood. Meanwhile, a second day of talks began Thursday between Russia, Ukraine, and the US, after a "productive" Wednesday among the parties, a White House official tells ABC News.
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