Oksana Pokhodenko, 34, gasped, blinking, at the charred corpse. That was nother brother, she told herself, that was not Oleksandr.
Her brother lived once.
He kept calling — “Hello, Little One. We’re good. How are you?” — but nevermentioned that the Russians had overrun the village where he was hiding.
Her brother had taught her how to ride a bike and had loved towatch cartoons for hours with his son.
Pokhodenko’s task on Tuesday morning, to identify the unidentifiable, toreconcile the unreconcilable, to put a name on a blackened corpse, to fill outthe paperwork and to move on.
Her brother had not called since March 14.
23, the day before the Russians invaded.
When the Russians occupied that town, the family fled again, this time toHusarivka, a village of about 1,060 people.
In early March, the Russians occupied Husarivka and the Ukrainians counterattacked,shelling the enclave incessantly.
Five men had disappeared after going to feed cows at a farm that the Russians were usingas a headquarters.
Soon after, the corpses were delivered to the morgue in Zmiiv. He pulled out apassport and explained why the two bodies most likely were once her brother and Mr.Pysariv.
After Mr. Pokhodenko was shot, the coroner said, his corpse was dousedin fuel, covered with tires and set aflame.
Pokhodenko composed herself and walked out into the yard,into the warm sun, sobbing after looking at her brother’s body.
Pokhodenko’s partner asked to examine the corpse’s mouth.
He set it on a metal gurney outside the morgue, away from therotting corpse.
But it would take another night for her to accept thather brother was no longer missing, but dead, lying in amiddle-of-nowhere morgue, the casualty of a brutal war that had just begun.
Her acceptance that it was Oleksandr came down to height,foot size and how the corpse’s front teeth slanted at a particular and familiar angle.
“I don’t want my brother to lie there for a month,” she said before he wasburied Thursday, “it’s so cold in that room.”