The Cost: Military Cemeteries Expand Throughout Ukraine, Russia

This photo of Lviv's Lychakiv Cemetery was taken on May 23 as Ukrainians marked the Day of Heroes to honor soldiers killed in the Russian invasion.

The image is one of several recent pictures that hint at the massive human cost of Russian President Vladimir Putin's ongoing war on Ukraine.

A February 2023 photo shows a section of a cemetery in Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, dedicated to fallen soldiers.

An area of Kyiv's Lisove cemetery known as the Alley of Heroes, photographed in April 2023

Photos from Russian military cemeteries are rare, with journalists risking harsh penalties for spreading "fake news" about the Russian Army.

This May 2024 image from a cemetery in Russia's Tambov region shows military banners and a plaque commemorating a participant of what the Kremlin calls its "special military operation" in Ukraine. 

Friends and relatives visit the grave of a slain Ukrainian soldier at the Kryviy Rih cemetery in eastern Ukraine in April 2023. 

Ukraine has acknowledged 31,000 soldiers killed in the conflict, though independent experts believe the figure is far higher.
 

Combination satellite images show the proliferation of graves in Bogorodskoye, in Russia's Moscow region, in April 2023 (top) compared to October 2021. 

The BBC says it confirmed more than 50,000 Russian troops killed in the invasion so far, although the real number is also believed to be much higher.

Relatives visit the grave of a Ukrainian soldier in a cemetery in Brovary, just outside Kyiv, in April 2023. 

An undertaker walks past the Alley of Heroes at a cemetery in Irpin, near Kyiv, in February 2023. 

A gravedigger pauses from his work alongside the tombs of Russian soldiers in Yefremov, in Russia's Tula region, in March 2023. 

Military graves in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, photographed in February 2023

Graves of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine are seen at a cemetery near Volgograd, in southern Russia, in May 2022. 

Relatives drink to the memory of fallen soldiers in Borodyanka, near Kyiv, in March 2023.

A local of Izyum, in eastern Ukraine, visits the Alley of Glory in the city's cemetery in September 2023.

A portrait of Ukrainian machine-gunner Valentyna Makarenko seen at a cemetery in Kharkiv in January 2024.

A woman tends to the grave of a fallen soldier relative in the Bucha cemetery, near Kyiv, in March 2024. 

The graves of Ukrainian soldiers in Pokrovsk, eastern Ukraine, seen in August 2022.

At a cemetery in Mykolayiv, southern Ukraine, in October 2022, a woman weeps at the grave of her only son, a soldier killed by a Russian bombardment.