Ukraine's Four-Pawed War Heroes

These dogs and their two handlers belong to Antares, a canine search-and-rescue volunteer group based in Pavlohrad, near Dnipro in eastern Ukraine.
 

The mostly female team was founded by Larisa Borysenko (pictured) in 2008, long before the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine began. Antares started as a volunteer group, largely for locating missing people in the Ukrainian wilderness.
 

Antares search dogs hunt through rubble for survivors or the bodies of those killed after a Russian missile strike in Zaporizhzhya in October 2022.

When Kremlin-backed forces began a war in eastern Ukraine in 2014 that eventually escalated into Russia's full-scale 2022 invasion, the Antares team became focused largely on searching through the rubble of buildings hit by missiles and rocket artillery. 
 

"It's a game for them," Borysenko said of the urgent and grim task of hunting for survivors or bodies amid the rubble, "These dogs don't lose heart when they find dead bodies, no matter how strange it may sound, that's also a game for them."

Elton, the only certified search-and-rescue corgi dog in Ukraine, after the location of a body.

Antares has 14 dogs and around 30 people in its organization. The group was named after the first dog from post-Soviet Ukraine to represent the country at the world championships for search-and-rescue dogs.

Members of the Antares team gather at the site of a strike.

Borysenko says one of the toughest parts of the work comes after the dogs have thoroughly scoured the site of a strike for survivors. "It's a scary moment when I say, 'There’s no one left alive in this rubble,'" she said. "That means the heavy equipment gets sent in. It’s a big responsibility...what if there is a survivor in there? That person will never return home."
 

A member of the Antares team with its handler

Some of the dogs trained by the Ukrainian volunteers are specialists at finding bodies, others are "all-rounders" who can sniff out both survivors and victims.

 

Survivors are announced with a happy bark from the dogs. In contrast, according to Borysenko (pictured), "When bodies are found, some dogs also bark, but it's with a very different tone. Other dogs are silent, they lie down. It looks terrible, they shake and point to where the body is," she said. 


 

In a February 2023 interview, Borysenko said that since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched the team has not found anyone alive in the rubble of buildings.
 

The Antares dogs are equipped with harnesses that allow them to be lowered into spaces with a rope, and special shoes to protect their feet while picking through rubble. The dogs also wear beepers that indicate both where the dogs are, and whether the dogs are moving or stationary, depending on how rapidly the beepers sound.
 

Maria Romanova, pictured here with her corgi Elton, is the youngest member of the Antares team at 17. Her brother serves as a Ukrainian soldier. 

"Until recently, we did not take young people on difficult missions," Borysenko said, "but the rush [of the Russian invasion] left us no choice, and if a 17-year-old girl can do something that millions of adults can't, then she is needed now." 



 

Elton the corgi during a training run

Due to their stumpy stature corgis are almost never used for search and rescue, but Romanova says Elton, who is highly trained, worked for 22 hours nearly without a break after a recent missile strike in Dnipro. "It was difficult, because the rubble is quite slippery, the dogs had to balance on the slabs of concrete while wearing shoes," she recalled. "There was a lot of smoke, it made things difficult. But we worked well -- we found people, but unfortunately only those who had passed away." 



 

Borysenko admits feeling guilty for the amount of work her dogs are sometimes put through. After one long search mission, she says one of her dogs jumped straight onto the sofa when they returned home, "Then she got up to walk into the kitchen for a drink of water. Soon we started wondering 'where is the dog?' She had fallen asleep next to the water bowl!"

The volunteer, who has worked with dogs since she was a child, said: "I feel so sorry for them. But we have high requirements, both for ourselves and for the dogs."