for
spe foreign
we're in the area of the airport uh
which the rebels recently won from the
ukrainians and now they're cleaning up
the area Gathering dead bodies and they
put us on this armored vehicle to take
us into the airport terminal
[Music]
so we've just arrived at the destroyed
denet Airport terminal apparently
they're cleaning up the area from all
the destruction it looks like the
surface of the Moon here um but they're
also apparently still put pulling out
bodies of dead Ukrainian soldiers
Jesus flown into this airport before him
really not recognizing any part of
it I think though this is
the arrivals area just because we're on
the ground
floor that's the Europe car desk where I
run to the car from Once at least where
it used to be
it's really hard to imagine the kind of
fighting that you would had to have in
order for this kind of Destruction to
have taken
place so these men down here they're
actually Ukrainian uh prisoners of War
some of them were serving in the airport
before it was taken by the pro Russia
forces now they're being used as labor
for the pro Russia side clearing away
the rubble here in the airport and
trying to access some of the bodies that
are beneath all of the concrete slabs
that became broken down during the
fighting fore
[Music]
so what's happening is the guys from the
Emergency Services over there um said
that it's too dangerous to continue
working while that beam is hanging from
the ceiling they're worried that it
might come down on the people working
down there so they're going to try to
drop it before for the PS get back to
work apparently there's three bodies
down there that they can see that
they're trying to get out but they've
been uh digging here for a couple of
days and it's really
difficult what is going on here right
now and what is your role here we are
here because uh we are trying or we are
assisting the teams that are in charge
of uh the search and the collect C of
bodies putting them in body bags and
label them correctly Etc to be able to
then transport them to the marks for the
correspondent forensic
examination is it difficult to identify
the bodies from here the difficulty
varies it depends very much in the state
of the body because as much information
is recovered the chances for the
identification are very high the
temperatures here have been very cold
this has helped the bodies to be
preserved we will try to collect
information from the body like hi like
uh any identifying features like or uh
additional documents that that person
may have identity tax or personal
belongings clothing and then put all
this together then do a comparison with
a missing person that it's known to be
to probably have died here so after
making this comparison of information we
can identify the individual DNA samples
are going to be collected also so that's
additional uh information that we'll
have from the body to ensure the
identification
so uh representatives from uh all the
sides uh have actually come here to
observe what's going on there's um an
officer from uh the Russian army he
actually has a label on his jacket that
says Ministry of defense of the Russian
Federation pretty refreshing to see
those guys actually wearing one of those
there's a representative here from the
Ukrainian uh Army there's uh the Red
Cross workers so all of this is
happening under International
observation so we're going over to uh
where they've put a couple of the
recovered bodies they brought one of the
PS along with them to identify the
bodies he knew the men when they were
still alive
apparently
Pho conditions of these bodies really
deteriorated but there there's many more
the whole place is just a one big
graveyard foree
[Music]
according to the Minsk agreement uh
which was the ceasefire agreement signed
a few weeks ago both sides were supposed
to exchange their prisoners of war the
uh separatists claim that the ukrainians
have 220 of their men they're not saying
how many ukrainians they're holding we
can see though that these uh prisoner of
war swaps haven't been completed yet
because they're still being used for
Force labor here in this airport and to
help Identify some of the bodies of
their Ukrainian uh comrades who fell
here