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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Shaun Walker in Velykyi Doroshiv

‘My dear son’: the Ukrainian soldier who came back from the dead

Hands hold a phone displaying a photo of Nazar Daletskyi and another man behind him
Nataliia Daletska shows a picture of her son, Nazar Daletskyi, taken immediately after he was released from captivity. Photograph: Jędrzej Nowicki/The Guardian

Nazar Daletskyi was declared dead in May 2023. The DNA match left no room for doubt, officials told his mother, Nataliia. A Ukrainian soldier who volunteered for the front in the early weeks of the war, Nazar had become one more casualty of Russia’s invasion.

Nazar’s remains were laid to rest in the cemetery of his home village. In the months after the funeral, Nataliia visited the grave at least once a week, at first to cry and later to stand in quiet contemplation, remembering her only son.

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