Evgeny Korolenko was born in the Soviet Union in 1967 and died in Ukraine in 2014. His story sheds light on the lives of those who have crossed the border from Russia to fight – and the efforts to cover their traces
Evgeny Korolenko with a dummy machine gun in a photo he uploaded on the social media site Vkontakte.
Bording crossing
The driver of the freezer lorry crossed into Russia at the Uspenka border post in the early hours of 30 May. A black Land Cruiser met the lorry; the driver followed. He unloaded his cargo around 4.30am. He was unsure exactly where. A morgue, perhaps on a military base on the edge of Rostov-on-Don.
The border guards on duty at Uspenka that night say three people dressed in camouflage turned up, turned off the CCTV, demanded the border guards switch off their mobile phones and confiscated the handsets while the lorry was crossing the border. The guards did not see any documents for the cargo; they did not check inside the vehicle nor register its crossing.
The freezer section contained the bodies of 31 Russian fighters killed in the battle near Donetsk airport on 26 May. Alerted by the authorities of the Donetsk People’s Republic, journalists followed the lorry to the border. The journalists learned two names: Sergey Zhdanovich and Yuri Abrosimov. Later, two more names turned up in social networks – Alexey Yurin and Alexander Efremov, who did their compulsory military service in the 45th regiment of the special forces unit of Russian air force troops. That’s it.
The unnamed morgue where the bodies were offloaded seems likely to be the 1602nd district military hospital in a remote area of Rostov called Voenved. It is a sprawling officers’ town, with military units, loading stations and an airport. The hospital has a centre for receiving and dispatching the dead reconnaissance and a huge body storage facility for 400 people, a reminder of the Chechen war…
Voices of Ukraine 