‘They said my husband had died – but there wasn’t a body’: The families hunting for Ukraine’s missing soldiers

Lidiya Sribna takes flowers to unidentified graves in the military cemetary in Dnipro. Photograph: Anastasia Vlasova/The Observer

Treading carefully between the plots, Lidiya Sribna, 51, goes from grave to grave placing a red carnation on each of the mounds of soil.

Sometimes, on these visits to Krasnopillya military cemetery on the outskirts of Dnipro, in south-east Ukraine, she will balance sweets or biscuits on the black wooden crosses – a Ukrainian tradition – or give the small plaques a wipe and pick up any litter that has been scattered by the wind.