Valeria Mikhailova recently buried a sealed coffin, which -- Russian authorities told her -- contained the remains of her 23-year-old army contractor husband Maksim who was killed in Ukraine.
The family was not allowed to open the coffin, which they buried in their hometown of Armavir, in Russia’s Krasnodar region, in early May.
“The [officials] threatened that they will launch a criminal probe against us if we open the coffin without permission. I begged them to show me at least a photo of the body [taken before it was placed in the coffin] to see how it looked like. They didn’t have any. They didn’t allow us to do a DNA test,” Mikhailova said.
Without having seen and identified the body, the Mikhailov family are not convinced the remains in the coffin did indeed belong to Maksim as the authorities claimed.
“I often think, ‘Who did I bury?’ I don’t know,” Mikhailova said. She did not say which government agency the officials represented.
Similar claims have been voiced by many Russians whose family members were killed in the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
According to families, eyewitnesses, and Russian media reports, it has become common practice since the beginning of the war in February 2022 that Russian military officials demand that relatives of dead soldiers do not open the coffins they receive from Ukraine.
Authorities do not provide any reason, merely telling the relatives the opening the coffins is against the law, according to two affected families who spoke to RFE/RL.
The law, however, does not bar relatives from opening of the coffins for burial. Lawyers say there were some exceptions to this during the COVID-19 pandemic to prevent the spread of the virus.
Digging Up Coffins After Mix-Up
Some Russian families have reportedly buried a “wrong” body only to be told by authorities to dig the coffin up and return it to a rightful family after a “mix-up.”
The family of a dead soldier from Yekaterinburg who was identified only by his first name, Ivan, had to conduct two funeral ceremonies in two weeks in January 2024 when the authorities mistakenly send them the remains of another person.
“We just received Ivan’s remains. The first time we buried a stranger,” a family member said ahead of the second funeral.
In Buryatia, the family of 44-year-old contractor Sergei K. went through the pain and agony of getting the news of his death in Ukraine and receiving a coffin along with his death certificate in 2023.
Several weeks after holding a funeral ceremony, the family received a phone call from Sergei K., who said he was wounded and taken to hospital for treatment.
A recent study published by the Washington-based think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, estimates that as many as 250,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since the war began.
It is not known how many families received and buried the remains of strangers. Russian officials don’t release such reports.
In Armavir, the Mikhailov family plans to take legal action to secure a court order to exhume the body they buried last month in order to conduct a DNA test.
Valeria Mikhailova said she was initially discouraged by some friends who told her that the Ministry of Defense has sued several families for “illegally opening coffins” from Ukraine.
“They told me: ‘Think about what would happen to your 4-year-old son with his father in the grave and his mother in prison,’” Mikhailova said.
Mother Hopes Her Son Is Still Alive
Valeria's mother-in-law, Valentina Mikhailova, still hopes that her son, Maksim, could still be alive. The mother says the Russian authorities’ version about how Maksim was killed and how his body was allegedly found and identified has been inconsistent.
“Everyone around has lied about it. The military enlistment office told us that his body… was identified by his fellow soldiers and his commander, and that there was no need for a DNA test. Then, it turned out that his fellow soldiers had lost him altogether and there was no identification at all,” Valentina Mikhailova told RFE/RL.
Along with the coffin, the family also received what Valentina Mikhailova described as a handwritten piece of paper that states Maksim “died in an explosion.”
“How can they possibly call this paper an official document?” Mikhailova said. “They also promised to send my son’s belongings – his passport, military identity card, and identification tag. But one month on, we haven’t received anything.”
Earlier this week, Kyiv accused Moscow of sending badly mutilated bodies to Ukraine and mixing up body parts as Russia and Ukraine exchanged prisoners and returned the bodies of the dead.
“Bodies are returned in an extremely mutilated state, parts of [the same] bodies in different bags. There are cases when the remains of one person are returned even during different stages of repatriation,” Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said, accusing Russia of “deliberately” making it more difficult for Kyiv to identify the repatriated bodies.
