More soldiers are killed in Eastern Ukraine each passing day, but no one knows how many, in total, who are killed in the war. This is the story about why Oleg, Mikhail and Roma gave their lives to a rebel republic.DONETSK, EASTERN-UKRAINE:Text: Per Christian Selmer-AnderssenPhotos: Kyrre LienOlga Fedorovsky is guided towards the open casket by two men dressed in black. They give her water from a half-empty, green plastic bottle. She drinks as if it was oxygen. A muffled scream. Sobbing that is drowned out by hyperventilation. We are attending the funeral of Oleg Fedorovsky. A day earlier, they buried his good friend Maksim. The day after, we’ll attend the funeral of their good friend Roma. Only 24 hours after the death of Roma and Maksim, Olegs heart stopped beating. “Killed by a sniper”, someone says. Other than that, no one is talking about what happened to Oleg. The priest places a loaf of bread on the coffin. He has a grizzled, weathered face — and is the most terrifying person in the heavily armed funeral procession.
- We have different paths in life, and some have shorter paths than others. Soldiers go directly to God, says the priest.
Olga kisses her husband’s pale face for the last time. He wears a white ribbon on his head, which partly covers the bandages over his left temple. The grizzled priest motions the grave diggers, who put out their cigarettes before they shut the coffin.Oleg is then lowered into the ground for the last time.Olga’s screams mix with the howls of her son: A heavy-set 19 year-old who is standing next to the procession, sobbing with increasing intensity. His friends are standing on the side-lines, looking a bit uncomfortable. They are smoking, and their gazes are fixed on the peat in front of them.Ina Layevska, a woman in uniform, with long, pitch-black hair, unholsters her gun and approaches the field. Some twenty soldiers follow her.They will fire their weapons in salute as a last goodbye to Oleg.
- I don’t have time to stop crying over one soldier before we lose the next, says Ina Layevska.
It is Ina’s job to deliver the news to the widow when a soldier is killed. She is also the one who has invited us to the funeral.In the Vostok Batallion she is simply known by the nickname “Mom”.After the funeral, she joins the other soldiers on the army bus.They are heading back to the front lines.(...)The whole feature in Norwegian:And here in Roads & Kingdom in English. 
