Three gunshots rang out as an honor guard fired into the air over the snow-covered cemetery. Soldiers lifted a Ukrainian flag from a coffin and handed it to family members. Then a trumpet, accompanied by a drum, bid farewell to the fallen soldier.
After playing a Ukrainian version of taps, the two musicians from the military band walked slowly away, leaving the mourners to grieve.
“Unfortunately, we cannot raise them from their graves, but we can play taps,” Maj. Oleksandr Holub said of the daily visits that members of the band he conducts make to the cemetery, where hundreds of new graves have been dug for Ukrainian soldiers.
Over the three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, Ukraine has experienced tremendous losses. In an interview published last month, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that at least 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the war and that more than 350,000 had been wounded, figures that are widely seen as underestimates.
For the past year, the Russian Army has been on the offensive, capturing Ukrainian territory regularly and killing Ukrainian soldiers in increasing numbers.
Then comes the work of the band of the 101st Separate Guard Brigade of the General Staff.
“We treat every funeral like it’s our most important concert, as we are saying farewell to those because of whom we are still here,” said Pvt. Lev Remenev, a song writer in civilian life who volunteered to fight in the army but instead wound up in the 101st Separate Guard band, where he plays the piano.
The mission of the band’s 21 members is to show two sides of Ukraine’s struggle three years into the war: acknowledging the unbearable toll and keeping up the spirits of those who press ahead with the fighting.
They support soldiers and civilians by playing uplifting concerts in schools and at universities and rehabilitation centers. But the tune they play most frequently is a version of taps, to honor their fallen comrades.
The musicians say it is often difficult to transition to the cheerful mood of a concert for schoolchildren or for soldiers in hospitals right after playing at a funeral.
“If you did not manage to switch, and go on being grim, kids feel it,” said Major Holub, 45, the conductor, who has been with the band for 18 years. “Kids are the easiest audience, and it is very easy to get them to have fun,” he said. “Soldiers are the hardest.”
But for the musicians, funerals are the hardest.
They played a version of taps at funerals before the war, too, but mostly for retired soldiers who died of old age, Major Holub said. It became harder in 2014, when Russia invaded the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and soldiers were killed in battle. It has become much harder since the full-scale invasion, he said.
He recalls the funeral that affected him the most: “I will always remember a young boy called Andriy, from our brigade,” he said. “He wanted us to play at his wedding, and in summer 2023, we played at his wedding. And then a year later, in summer 2024, we played at his funeral.”
He added: “I will say honestly that when I see mothers burying their sons, I have tears coming up — it is very hard.”
Private Remenev joined the army in 2022 and was sent to the Donbas region to fight. That July, he was assigned to join the band.
He still writes songs and his comrades have asked him to write an anthem to celebrate victory, he said. “This is a very high bar,” Private Remenev said of the expectations for an anthem, adding that he had yet to produce one.
“The main thing is for the victory to actually come, and then I will write better normal songs,” he said. “People do not listen to anthems; people like normal songs.”
Since joining the army, he has played more than 200 concerts in hospitals and schools and at other events. But like the others in the band, he has played at even more funerals.
“I always feel gratitude first of all, and then the grief, and then the pain that boys and girls are dying — that our nation is dying,” he said.
He, like his colleagues, says it is hard to be in good spirits after the funerals. At concerts, they need to raise morale. “We are no different from the entire country in this,” he said. “All people who live in war have to force themselves to switch to a false good mood. This ability comes with practice.”
Sometimes, the military band members chat on the bus to the cemetery, giving one another moral support. Sometimes, they say, it is just too sad, and they drive in silence.
Pvt. Oleksiy Prykhodko, 29, has been performing in the band for five years, but he only starting playing regularly at funerals after the full-scale invasion in 2022. “It is possible to adapt to everything,” he said. “But it is very hard to see the tears of relatives who lost their loved ones.”
The first funeral he played at stuck in his memory. “We went to the cemetery, but there were no relatives,” he said. “It was the very beginning of the war, and the mother of the fallen soldier had evacuated and could not make it back in time.” She had fled and was a refugee. “One woman called her,” he said. “And she was saying goodbye to her dead son over the phone.”
He added: “I have no answers as to how to cope, but somehow I go on.”
Every morning, he goes out to a parade ground at the base in Kyiv, the capital, at 9 a.m. with his trumpet and plays a version of taps for soldiers at the base. Most days, he plays the music again at a funeral, he said.
On one such day in December, there was a power cut from Russian missile attacks on power plants in the middle of a funeral, he said. The church went dark, and mourners were asked to switch on the flashlight on their phones to find the coffin inside the dark room and bid farewell to the fallen soldier.
Then Private Prykhodko played a version of taps.
“Relatives never say anything to us — they do not think about us at that moment,” he said. “When their loved one dies, we are the last thing on their minds, but we still come and play taps,” he said. “It is a ritual, and it is important.”
Yurii Shyvala contributed reporting.