LVIV, Ukraine — One day, there might be two. Then, perhaps — an increasing rarity — a day with none. And then, as on this hot, cloud-shrouded day, four.
Four caskets to be carried by pallbearers along a cobblestone street lined with silent mourners. Four names intoned in the echoing, dimly lighted recesses of a landmark church. Four fresh graves hewn from claylike soil in a historic cemetery where the newly dead are crowding out the old.
Ukraine's ongoing counteroffensive against invading Russian troops, a bloody, slow-motion struggle that is exacting a heavy but undisclosed toll from both armies, began with little fanfare in early June. No one expects the fighting to end any time soon.
