Ukraine war: Funeral held for battleground body collector

Against a backdrop of muffled booms from the frontlines to the south and east, people sank to their knees and threw roses in front of the van as it inched past them.

Then, as the back door opened and a wooden coffin was pulled out, the sobbing began.

"My son! Why?" cried Ludmilla Sosnenko, clutching her daughter for comfort.

There have been many untimely, unexpected funerals in this northern Donbas town in recent months, but this one, unusually, was not for a soldier or a regular civilian.

Denys Sosnenko - a 21-year-old former Ukrainian national kickboxing champion - volunteered last year to work as a body collector for a charitable organisation known as Black Tulip, who scour the frontlines for the abandoned corpses of soldiers, both Ukrainian and Russian.

"Denys - there are many angels on your shoulders today - the angels of those you brought back home," said Alexey Yukov, the local head of Black Tulip, addressing the crowd. "Because of your work so many soldiers, who died in places no one would ever have looked, have been reunited with their families."