A new funeral ceremony for military personnel has been developed in Ukraine
Recently a rehearsal of the burial ceremony of a dead soldier took place in Kyiv. Since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, this process has been a mixture of Soviet statutes and local religious traditions. The victims were still buried according to Soviet rites. Now, clergy of different denominations and religions will be involved in the official ceremony. The new ceremony will be introduced by the end of this year. It should be noted that relatives can refuse the official ritual.
“We have studied the statutes of the UNR Army, the tradition of honoring fallen Cossacks and elders, and analyzed the rituals of the armies of the United States, Israel, Poland, Turkey and Belgium. Thus we have developed the concept of a Ukrainian military burial rite,”- says Pavel Podobed, Head of the Accounting and Preservation Department of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory.
According to him, the ceremony is divided into parts - military and religious. It involves a group of banner carriers, a salute group, honor guards, a trumpeter, and a drummer, all under the command of a senior officer.
There is a public memorial service, a Devine Liturgy, in a church or other place. Then the lid is closed, the coffin is wrapped with a national flag and taken to a hearse while accompanied by trumpet and drum music. There and at the cemetery a flag, a crucifix, and a portrait of the dead are carried in front of the coffin. At the cemetery, the flag is unfurled over the coffin.
At this moment the first of three salute volleys is heard. At the same time, the trumpeter performs “Shana” (“Honor”). The state flag is folded by the officer in charge and handed over to the relatives for safekeeping. Then goes the religious part of the ceremony.
Ritual groups will be established in local military garrisons, involving local government and national police.
The new rite will be performed to bury the soldiers who died during the fighting in the ATO-OOS, the veterans of this war, who were demobilized and died afterwards, the fighters for independence of Ukraine from the ranks of the UPA, OUN, the Carpathian Sich, and those soldiers who participated in peacekeeping.
There is also aa entire military funeral rite to be used during the burial of Heroes of Ukraine and Chevaliers of the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky. This particular rite is more solemn: the coffin with the deceased must be carried on a gun carriage (instead of the hearse) and the funeral shall be accompanied by a military orchestra, with more gunners in the salute team and the honor guard.
