LVIV, Ukraine — It is overcast, gray, chilly, and damp as a crowd, including your correspondent, gathered outside the Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church, a Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. Although in full communion with Rome and the pope, the denomination maintains its own distinct liturgy and theology. There are funerals here every day honoring Ukrainian soldiers fallen in battle. 

The first phase of this war has come to a close. Routed in the north and parts of the east, the Russians have pulled back to Belarus and regrouped to positions in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s defense in this first phase of the war will become the stuff of legend. These funerals, though, testify to the fact that the victory to date has come at an enormous cost.

Some days there are group services here: three coffins, three burials at a time. Today, there is just one: of Volodymyr Dukh, a 27-year-old “солдат” — soldat, an enlisted rank equivalent to private — in the army. The crowd gathered outside is a small sea of gray-white hair and bald heads, the friends and the Dukh family.

Opposite the church, 12 soldiers stand at attention bearing the blue and gold Ukrainian flag, Private Dukh’s portrait, and a simple wooden cross that will mark his grave. Dukh appeared in arms in 2014 at Ilovaisk, in the Donetsk Oblast that saw Ukrainian forces encircled by Russian and separatist forces.

Although Ukrainian troops negotiated with the Russian command a withdrawal corridor, their agreement was not honored, and the Ukrainians were massacred during the retreat. Dukh was among the survivors, but not today. Church bells ring at 11 o’clock sharp, and the honor guards doff their caps.

Six camouflaged pallbearers march in lockstep toward the open doors of a nearby hearse. They slide the wood-paneled coffin out and onto their shoulders and trail a black-robed priest carrying a tall wooden cross into the church, toward the entrance of which the crowd moves forward in a wave-like surge, trailing the soldiers and family members inside.

The church’s precentor sings in Ukrainian, greeting us from beside the altar. I smell the sweet, faintly burned smell of tallow. The precentor’s voice fills the cathedral and reverberates throughout the sacred space. Reading from a small hymnary, he pauses for a moment and takes a deep breath. In the small silence that follows, Private Dukh’s mother wails softly.

She is standing across from the coffin and leans on a younger woman, whose face is puffy and red. Tears have wiped away her makeup in uneven streaks. Dukh’s casket is closed, a decision either of choice or necessity. He fell for Ukraine at Poposna, just 50 miles from Ilovaisk. He was struck by Russian tank fire while part of a water detail.

The gathered crowd fills much of the church’s floor area. Aged women and men fill the space and clutch handkerchiefs, dabbing at eyes and noses. Dukh’s honor guard stands at attention across from the precentor. Five priests stand at the head of the crowd behind a battered wooden lectern.

The clergy wear simple black robes and miters, but their stoles are one of the few splashes of color here, a deep orange emblazoned with gold crosses. The precentor calls out “слава” — glory — several times. The congregants and priests make the sign of the cross in unison. Glory to Ukraine, the precentor declares, and glory to Private Dukh.

Amid the mourners’ muted blacks and blues, a smudge of green stands out. A lone soldier dressed in fatigues is amongst Dukh’s family and stares at the casket numbly. His eyes are deeply bloodshot, one hand rubs his closely shaven head as if in disbelief. His body language suggests they’d been war-time friends.

The precentor ends with “Hallelujah” six times and bows his chin to his chest. Another priest walks forward, swinging a silver censer around Dukh’s casket. Thick curls of incense pour out and fill the air with a sharp, pungent fragrance.

The church’s interior is subdued. Deep blue, Corinthian-capped columns stand on the church’s dark red and flinty blue-gray marble floors. The church ceiling is its sole source of color: biblical scenes in bright pastels stare down at the mourners.

A priest walks up to Dukh’s casket from behind the pulpit and sprinkles water over the coffin with a long-haired whisk. The soldiers tenderly drape a Ukrainian flag over Dukh’s casket, marking the service’s end. Private Dukh’s pallbearers hoist his coffin onto their shoulders and march through the parted crowd of mourners.

A lone trumpet and drum sound Ukrainian taps — similar to ours — as the pallbearers step outside the church.

The crowd surrounds Private Dukh’s family, but parts for the father. The elder Dukh walks haltingly forward toward his dead son. He clutches a tweed hat, revealing a carefully combed head of wispy-white hair. Tears drop from his trembling jaw and onto the breast pockets of his shirt.

Mourners pass funeral bouquets to the pallbearers, who reach into the hearse and tenderly place the flowers over the coffin, covering the dark wood with bright dashes of blue and yellow, a contrast to the gray and misty sky above the cemetery. A fuzzy drizzle dribbles off the tombstones.

The monuments, some modest, some ornate, are engraved with Polish, German, Russian, and Ukrainian names and disclose Lviv’s checkered history under the Poles, the Austro-Hungarians, Nazis, and the Soviet Union. The drummer and bugler play their taps in unison as the pallbearers march to the grave.

The precentor from the church sings again, and his chant echoes through the graveyard. The honor guard carefully wraps the Blue and Gold that was draped over Dukh’s casket. Flower petals from the funeral bouquets that rode with his casket fall to the ground. 

A soldier presents Dukh’s mother with the carefully bundled colors. “On behalf of the president of Ukraine,” he begins, but his words are drowned out by the mother, her face buried in the glorious shroud for her son who will be interred in a corner of the cemetery reserved for veterans.

Polished gray granite crosses mark the final resting places of those who died before February 24. Simple wooden crosses mark those who fell during Russia’s renewed offensive, names and dates of birth and death written on plates nailed into the wood.

They outnumber the granite crosses, and there is hardly any space left in this sacred spot.

Several honor guards stand near Dukh’s grave opposite their commanding officer, rifles at their sides. The officer stands with his fist raised in the air. He drops his fist, and the honor guard fires a volley. Three extraordinary loud reports. Many in the crowd jump, not expecting the shots.

The shots are part of classical warfare, during which the fighting was sometimes paused so that each side could reclaim its dead. Once that was completed, three shots were fired to signal the pause was over. Now gravediggers in blue jumpsuits lower Dukh’s casket tenderly into the earth, and his honor guard fires another volley. 

Large clods of wet dirt thump as they hit the wooden coffin. A digger gingerly passes a spade to a priest. He presses crosses inside the grave’s four sides, murmuring a blessing, and sprinkles holy water into the grave. Some diggers pat down the earth with their spades, and another pounds Dukh’s grave marker into the dirt. 

Then the flowers of mourning are arranged around the low mound of dirt. The honor guard’s final volley pierces the silence again. It is finished. The Dukhs have buried their son, fallen in battle in eastern Ukraine, March 23, 2022.