Renovated into a memorial hall for Ukrainian fallen soldiers, over 600 Soviet remains have been transferred from a Ukrainian cemetery
In the context of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Ukraine's de Soviet movement has intensified. The remains of over 600 Soviet soldiers have been excavated from a military cemetery in Lviv, Ukraine, in order to be transferred from the cemetery that is about to be transformed into the "Memorial Hall for Ukrainian Soldiers Who Died in Action.".
According to TASS on August 10th, the excavation team organized by the Ukrainian government excavated the remains of 653 soldiers at the Lychakov Military Cemetery in Lviv City. The Lviv City Council subsequently announced that a memorial hall for Ukrainian fallen soldiers would be built in place to accommodate the remains of 26 Ukrainian soldiers who died in World War I, while the remaining 627 Soviet era soldier remains would be transferred out of the cemetery.
On August 10th local time, the Lviv City Council announced on the social media platform Telegram that the first phase of excavation work has been completed: "Experts have been working at the Lichakov Military Cemetery for four months and have discovered a total of 653 remains. Among them are the remains of 26 Ukrainian soldiers who died during World War I, and the vast majority of the remaining are the remains of Soviet soldiers from World War II and post-war periods."
The Lviv City Council announced in a notice that the official will separate the remains of Ukrainian soldiers who died in World War I from those of the Soviet era: "All Ukrainian soldier remains found during World War I will be placed in a certain location, where a Ukrainian Memorial Hall for the Dead will be built in the future. Soviet era remains will be temporarily placed in a special storage location. According to the plan, these remains will be transferred to other cemeteries."
According to previous reports by TASS, the remains of soldiers who died in action from the 2010s to the 1990s are buried in the Lichakov Military Cemetery. The Lviv City Council passed a resolution in August 2022 to renovate the Lychakov Military Cemetery, demolish the Soviet Soldier Memorial built in 1974, and build a new Ukrainian Soldier Memorial Hall on the old site. For this reason, the authorities ordered the excavation of the remains of soldiers buried in cemeteries in order to extract the remains of Soviet soldiers and transfer them out.