More than 1,000 Ukrainian servicemen and servicewomen who have been killed since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion are buried in Lviv’s historic Lychakiv Cemetery.
Last December, the current military section at the cemetery reached full capacity.
Since then, Ukrainian soldiers from the region who have been killed in combat have been buried at a new site within the cemetery.
City authorities also plan to replace the current wooden crosses with permanent headstones, and have designed headstones for deceased soldiers from Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim faiths.
RTÉ News spoke to some of the mourners last Sunday, who had lost family members and friends during the last four years of the war.
Olga Smolynets was among the mourners at the cemetery. She said she visited her son Ostap's grave every day of the week.
Ostap, a native of Lviv, had worked in an internet shop before the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
He volunteered for the Ukrainian army after Russia's full-scale invasion and was initially posted in his home region of Lviv to protect the Druzhba oil pipeline.
Ostap became the commander of a drone unit and was killed in action defending Pokvorsk in the Donetsk region in September 2024, one week before his 32nd birthday.
"He loved fishing and reading," said his mother, Olga.
"Since he was a child, he was interested in space, and when he had free time he was watching scientific movies," she said.
Many of the soldiers buried in Lychakiv Cemetery were born in the 1980s and 1990s.
Ukraine’s ministry of defence does not release current figures on the number of killed and wounded Ukrainian personnel.
Last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told broadcaster 'France 2’ that 55,000 Ukrainians had been killed in combat since Russia’s full-scale invasion, though a large number of personnel are classified as missing.
Mediazona, an independent Russian media outlet based outside of Russia, working with the BBC’s Russian service, has verified the deaths of 200,000 Russian soldiers since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The actual figure for Russian combat dead is likely to be much higher.
Western military intelligence agencies estimate that Russia has lost as many as 1.2 million soldiers since February 2022.
