Mothers of Irpin found their sons in unknown graves after four years of searching.

According to ТСН: Three families from Irpin, whose sons became volunteers at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, waited almost four years to learn about them. As a result, they were found in graves where they were buried as unknowns. The activity of the mothers helped reveal evidence of Russian war crimes and allowed for the honorable reburial of the defenders.

Three inseparable friends

The women — Mrs. Olesya (mother of Artur), Valeriia (mother of Ruslan), and Ludmila (mother of Oleksii) — became close friends over these years. Their children — Artur Baranets, Oleksii Yashchenko, and Ruslan Filipenko — had always been together since childhood. Artur and Oleksii had been friends since the age of three, back in kindergarten.

The boys had similar personalities and were tall — all three were nearly two meters tall.

“They were called oaks when we were looking for them, everyone said, how can you forget them, they stood together like oaks,” recalls Ruslan's mother.

At the time of the invasion, Artur and Ruslan were 22 years old, and Oleksii was 20. They first took their families to western Ukraine, and then returned to Irpin, where they joined a volunteer formation.

Oleksii's mother remembered his last words: “May everything be alright.”

Mission, captivity, and signs of torture

Contact with the boys was lost on March 2, 2022. That day, Ruslan, Artur, and Oleksii were ordered to deliver ammunition and drones to the positions.

In Vorzel, the boys came under fire. Their relatives managed to find out that they were captured here. At the end of March, a video of Artur and Ruslan being interrogated in the forest appeared on a Russian channel.

'A neighbor sent me a video where he looks severely beaten, kneeling, giving testimony to these military orcs… We were told that they can't be killed because there is a video that they are in captivity,” recounted Artur's mother.

Relatives submitted DNA materials in 2022. Searches were conducted among the captives, looking for clues in Olenivka, Novozibkov pre-trial detention center. “I was still looking for him alive,” said Ruslan's mother.

Own investigation and negligence of the investigation

A year passed, and the families did not gain access to the materials of the criminal case; investigators were changed. The mothers decided to conduct their own investigation, using unofficial contacts. They found a resident of Irpin Serhii Kondratenko, who was captured by the Russians at the same time.

Kondratenko remembered the boys by their height and car and stated that one of them was injured.

He confirmed that he spent about five days with Oleksii, Ruslan, and Artur, and they were tortured:

“They were used — it was March, cold. They bound them; they were sitting on them,” he says.

The boys were “taken for execution six times”. Then they were held in “refrigerators” of Hostomel Airport. On March 7, part of the civilians was taken into captivity, and some were shot.

Charred remains and DNA coincidence

When Kyiv region was de-occupied, charred remains were brought from Hostomel hangars to the Bucha Bureau of Forensic Medicine, so damaged that it was impossible to determine even the number of bodies.

Forensic expert Serhii Liakhovych explained that the remains were burned: “The worst is the effect of high temperatures; it's charring for us.”

From the burnt fragments, DNA was successfully extracted. Municipal services buried these packages at Hostomel cemetery as unknown.

After four years of uncertainty, worn out from the search, Mrs. Valeriia, through personal connections, asked to check her DNA. It turned out that her material had not been entered into the database at all.

When Valeriia Filipenko's DNA data was entered, they matched 99.9% with the remains numbered 352. She also learned that the relatives of Artur and Oleksii had a DNA match back in 2023, but they were not informed about it.

“If it wasn't for personal contacts to find this, we would have been waiting a long time for our children,” Valeriia noted with tears.

The fragments of Ruslan and Oleksii, as well as the majority of Artur, had been lying in these numbered graves for four years.

'For practically four years, I was looking for my child in captivity, while he lay here, under the house, and I couldn't come or cry… I and Lyuda have very small packages; there is almost nothing left,” Valeriia said.

Burial and continuation of the struggle

Artur, Ruslan, and Oleksii were reburied with honors on the Avenue of Heroes in Irpin. The friends rest nearby.

“We buried our children with dignity,” noted Ludmila.

For the mothers, this is not the end. They need to prove that their sons are participants in hostilities, since they voluntarily took up arms from the first days.

“I want all of humanity to know that they are heroes,” says Mrs. Valeriia.

However, the main battle continues — the women strive for all evidence of war crimes to be thoroughly collected. After all, those who shot and burned their unarmed sons “have names, ranks, and positions in the Russian army.”