A mass grave on the edge of this eastern Ukrainian city remains uncovered. Dirt mounds and yellow-petalled weeds surround a pit filled with a dozen or so body bags. They reek of death in the warm summer wind. The dead are civilians who were killed by shelling in recent months in Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk and the nearby town of Rubizhne. They are heaped together because there are no relatives to claim and bury their bodies.

Standing above the grave, Sergiy Veklenko, 41, explained why the bodies were still exposed: “All of our machinery that we had in the city’s inventory — excavators and all — was given to the army for digging trenches.”

As the war grinds into its fourth month and Ukrainian and Russian casualties mount well into the thousands of dead, it is clear that the trenches also have become graves for many soldiers.

Private Veklenko, a former police officer who joined the Ukrainian army when the war began, estimates that 300 people are buried in the mass grave. “We’ve been burying people here who died since April,” he said.

The grave is near a row of hills that is now home to Ukrainian artillery positions defending the city. The howitzers fired off and on through much of Thursday morning.

The number of civilians killed in Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk, two cities separated by the Siversky Donets river, is unknown. As Russia solidifies control in Sievierodonetsk and shifts its focus to neighbouring Lysychansk, civilian casualties there are sure to mount, unless Ukrainian forces retreat.

On Thursday, local officials said that at least four people had been killed in a Russian airstrike in Lysychansk. The attack happened in the morning, but it took several hours for the news to be posted in official Telegram channels, highlighting the difficulty of communicating what is happening in the city.

(New York Times News Service)