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SLOVIANSK, Ukraine — In the year since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the bodies of civilians and soldiers have piled up in mined forests and in cratered fields along Ukraine's front lines. It often falls on civilians like Oleksiy Yukov to find and retrieve the bodies.
"In war, you see the value of human life," he said. "How much, in war, human life has no value.
"With every death that I see, I want to become even more human," he continued. "I want to save more souls, bring more bodies back to their families. I commemorate the dead with every mission by becoming more human."