Oleksii Yukov

Oleksii Oleksandrovych Yukov (; 9 September 1985 – 5 August 2026) was a Ukrainian war archaeologist and head of Platzdarm , a volunteer group that searches for and retrieves the corpses of dead and missing soldiers in Ukraine.

Early life Yukov was born in Sloviansk, Donetsk Oblast, on 9 September 1985.

His first experience with the dead occurred when he was seven years old. During the construction of a hospital, part of the nearby was destroyed, and the ground was littered with skulls, bones, and coffins.

Another early impression was when he was 13 years old. Yukov went to a forest near Sviatohirsk, where he saw a meadow fully covered by bones of the soldiers of the Second World War. His shock at the fact that, half a century after the war's end, the soldiers were not properly identified and buried led him to repurpose nearby trenches as graves, burying the bones there. Later, he joined the "Hola Dolyna" and "East. West" search groups.

Platzdarm In 2013, Yukov founded the search unit of the Association of Researchers of Military-Historical Heritage "Platzdarm" .

From 2014 to 2022, Platzdarm recovered the remains of some four thousand Soviet soldiers, two thousand soldiers of Nazi Germany and its allies, six hundred victims of political repression, and 150 soldiers of the First World War. From 2022 to 2026, it also recovered the bodies of over 3,500 soldiers of the Russo-Ukrainian war. He received a memorial service in St Volodymyr's Cathedral, in Kyiv, on 8 August. and daughter. Award of the President of Ukraine "Golden Heart" (2024): "For significant contributions in the provision of volunteer aid and the development of the volunteer movement, particularly during the defense of Ukraine, defense of the population's safety and the state's interests in relation to the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine"