https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/07/russia-ukraine-donetsk/398942/
Russians were even helping the people of Donetsk identify their dead. In the city’s crowded and pungent morgue, where semi-naked, waxy bodies lay scattered in unrefrigerated rooms, the director, Dmitri Kalashnikov, told me of future plans to build a DNA-testing lab nearby. The morgue, he said, currently has to send unidentified bodies to Dnepropetrovsk, home to the closest DNA-testing lab, across the frontline in Ukrainian territory. “It’ll be much easier and quicker to identify the bodies right here,” Kalashnikov said resignedly, adding that the “Russian experts” behind the DNA lab would arrive by autumn. Kalashnikov, who ran the morgue before war erupted, was clearly exhausted, his face marked with sorrow. He had seen hundreds of nameless bodies come through the morgue. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has estimated that 1,000 civilians are missing in the east, but Kalashnikov said he thinks the figure “is far, far higher.” When we stepped into the morgue’s dappled courtyard, two white trucks parked nearby hummed as they cooled the bodies inside.