Draining waters from the Kakhovka reservoir last month are revealing artifacts from bloody fighting almost 80 years ago.
Dmytro Smolienko/Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images
Ukraine is finding Nazi bullets, WWII trenches, and the bones of German soldiers on the battlefield, the New York Times reported.
Other WWII-era artifacts were found after the Kakhovka dam explosion last month.
Unverified videos and images of bones found in muddy battlefields were shared on social media.
As Ukraine continues its fierce fight against Russia’s invasion, it’s being reminded of Kyiv’s war-torn past.
Ukrainian groups trying to locate lost soldiers have found Nazi bullets, old weaponry, and even human remains from World War II, according to The New York Times.
Memory and Glory, a group looking for old war dead, joined up with the Ukrainian army to locate soldiers reported missing in action in the current conflict, the Times reported.
Already, the group has found more than 200 bodies from World War II, sometimes in the same trenches where the fighting is happening now, according to the outlet.
“When you dig into a trench, you find a trench from World War II,” director Leonid Ignatiev told the Times.
Even the bones of German soldiers — previously lost to time — are being discovered. In one instance, the bones of a Nazi soldier were buried in a cemetery for German war dead, the Times said.
More World War 2 remnants were unearthed after the Kakhovka dam was destroyed last month.
The Kakhovka reservoir drained almost completely dry after the dam’s destruction.
While pieces of modern air-defense missiles from Russia and Ukraine’s current conflict were found in the reservoir’s muddy shores, Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs also said, “ammunition, in particular, even from the time of the Second World War, is found in the areas of the Kakhovsky Reservoir.”
Last month, social media users in Ukraine shared videos and images of skulls and bones supposedly found in the reservoir’s mud; Insider couldn’t confirm if the videos of human remains are true.
What is now modern-day Ukraine saw intense fighting of WW2.
The Germans’ surprise invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 brought the area mostly under Nazi control, but a Soviet counteroffensive during 1943’s devastating Battle of the Dneiper established their control over most of the region.