During the year of the Great War, almost three hundred fresh graves appeared at the Lychakivsky cemetery, known as the Field of Mars. Although by 2022 it was practically an empty meadow.
This is reported by “Hromadske”.
At first, the dead soldiers were buried in the Field of Honorable Burials No. 76 of the Lychakiv Cemetery. Until February 2022, there were 66 burials of independence fighters in the modern Russian-Ukrainian war. Back in February-March 2022, 37 soldiers who died after a full-scale invasion were buried nearby. There are no monuments on their graves yet.
“When the place on the field ran out, and the great war was just unfolding and it became clear that it would last for a long time, in Lviv they decided to continue burying the soldiers on the Field of Mars,” says the director of the Lychakiv cemetery Oleksandr Dmytriv.
The director of the Lychakiv cemetery says that the graves on the Field of Mars are dug in the morning before the burial, because they are worried that in the evening some of the relatives who visit the dead may not notice the dug pits.
They don’t have time to dig with shovels, so they use equipment. Later, the Mars Field is planned to be fenced off and the remains of soldiers of the Soviet Army and the punitive body of the USSR, the NKVD, who are buried here, are planned to be reburied.
“A temporary fence will be installed around the perimeter of the Field of Mars,” says Oleksandr Dmytriv.