Instead of concrete paths and plastic wreaths, relatives of fallen soldiers say green, environmentally friendly landscaping is best for a planned new military cemetery. From Expertkr / Rubryka.
You won’t hear a sound like this anywhere else. A thousand flags flutter in the wind, and steel cables clang softly against metal flagpoles. Across 7,000 square meters, there’s no rustle of trees – instead, another sound fills the air: the faint friction of plastic leaves from artificial wreaths and flowers, mingling with the dry whisper of wilted, once-living blooms. This mournful symphony urges us to honor those who gave their lives for Ukraine. At the same time, it makes us reflect on the future. In Kryvyi Rih, that reflection also includes thinking about the city’s environmental dimension.
The Memorial Section: How It all Began
In 2022, after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, part of the Central Cemetery in Kryvyi Rih was designated for the dignified burial of fallen defenders. Since then, more than a thousand soldiers from Kryvyi Rih and beyond have found their final resting place here. While the fallen are also buried in more than 30 other cemeteries across the city, this site is envisioned as the future burial place and memorial of honored soldiers – a place of remembrance and tribute to those who gave their lives for Ukraine’s freedom and independence in the fight against Russia’s aggression.
Similar memorial sites are being established throughout Ukraine. In some places, much attention is devoted to creating spaces worthy of the fallen. In others, as in Kryvyi Rih, the community has spent years advocating a redesign that reflects modern values and circumstances, rather than evoking the aesthetics of the Soviet past.
As public pressure grew, burials continued. Families decorated the graves of their loved ones at their own discretion, while the resting places of those without relatives, or whose families could not visit, became overgrown with weeds.
In the spring of 2023, the authorities in Kryvyi Rih briefly presented families of those buried in the military section with a sketch of the future memorial. The image showed a space entirely covered in granite – gravestones, evenly aligned walkways between them, a chapel, and monuments. Everything was lifeless stone, with only a few evergreen shrubs adding small splashes of green. There were no flowers, no trees, no signs of living, ecological life. At the time, few people paid much attention to this.
Resistance emerged a few months later, when families were shown a model of the monument intended for the memorial. The sculpture’s distinctly Soviet aesthetic outraged many and triggered a wave of criticism that soon extended to other aspects of the project’s design.
The authorities had planned to “align” the uneven rows of graves into perfect lines, meaning visitors would have to walk directly over the buried. The granite surfaces were to be polished – raising the risk of injuries, especially in rainy or icy weather. The plan also made no mention of basic amenities such as toilets, benches, or parking.
We decided to draw attention to this situation because, with thoughtful planning, a war memorial can serve not only as a site of remembrance but also as a space of nature – a living, ecological memorial.
This article is part of EcoCourse for Recovery, an initiative of Ukrainian news outlet Rubryka and the Recovery Window media network, with the support of Journalismfund Europe. Ten women journalists from different regions of Ukraine reported environmental stories, from the destruction of the Donetsk steppes to water-supply problems in Mykolaiv and the crisis on the Dniester River. Their reports show how Russia’s war against Ukraine is transforming Ukrainian ecosystems and why these issues must be addressed at both national and international levels.
A Project on Paper Only
The plot of land where Kryvyi Rih’s Honorable Burial Section is being developed covers 18.4 hectares and is designated for the expansion of the Central Cemetery. In September 2023, the city signed a contract to construct a new memorial complex on this site during 2023–2024.
In mid-June 2025, activists expressed doubts about whether the plants planned for the concrete “pools” around the perimeter of the future memorial would be able to grow. When we approach one of these pools, botanist Viktoria Trotner looks inside, pauses, and says:
“Overall, I have no idea how the plants are meant to be installed in these concrete pools, what kind of soil mixture will be used, or to what depth. I just don’t understand this.”
“Many families want open ground, they want flower beds, they want to plant something themselves,” says Kateryna Stankevych, sister of soldier Oleksii Riznychenko, who is buried here.
“Personally, I think it’s very important, because it brings an element of life to this place. When everything is covered in granite, it doesn’t feel like a place you want, and most importantly, need, to visit.”
In the fall of 2023, Stankevych became one of the main drivers behind the campaign for a dignified memorial cemetery in Kryvyi Rih. She co-founded the Community of Families of Kryvyi Rih Heroes, a nongovernmental organization that holds commemorative events and gatherings in the military section of the cemetery, where volunteers clean and care for graves that have long been neglected or abandoned.
“There are no strangers here – all the defenders are ours,” Stankevych says.
How It Was
After Kryvyi Rih was liberated from Nazi occupation in 1944, efforts began to create a single burial site for military personnel. This was driven by the need to gather scattered individual and mass graves of Soviet soldiers who had died during the city’s liberation.
According to Kryvyi Rih local historian and World War II specialist Volodymyr Bukhtiyarov, consolidating the graves in one location made it easier to honor the fallen, while also taking into account the local terrain and proximity to groundwater, ensuring that the decomposition of human remains would not contaminate water sources.
The memorial, covering 1,065 square meters, now officially known as the Military Section of the Kryvyi Rih Cemetery, contains several dozen individual graves and more than 60 mass graves “under grass-covered mounds.”
When we visited, many of the granite slabs bearing the names of the fallen were faded and almost illegible. What caught our attention, however, was the mention of grass – because there was none. The mounds appeared freshly dug, with not a single weed or blade of grass in sight. Occasional bushes or small trees had been cut down to the roots. It seems likely that the executive committee ordered a thorough cleanup soon after our request for documentation of the memorial – there is no confirmation, but the timing is striking.
Without grass, with only bare soil, the memorial feels lifeless. Granite slabs, standard concrete paths, a large five-pointed star made of polished steel, and two reinforced concrete steles inscribed in Russian – “Nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten” and “1941–1945” – dominate the site. There are no bouquets of fresh or dried flowers, nor any artificial wreaths or decorations. Only two trees stand within the memorial; three sides are bordered by trees and bushes that have overgrown the old civilian burial grounds.
In two decades of reporting local news from Kryvyi Rih, journalists don’t seem to have produced any articles or videos covering events held here to honor the fallen soldiers. The slogan on the reinforced concrete steles raises a question mark, albeit a rhetorical one.
“This is the kind of ‘dead’ territory the authorities seem intent on creating in our section as well,” says Stankevych, who accompanied us to see how the memorial is maintained. While care is evident, concerns remain about the environmental sustainability of the approach.
New National Memorial Raises Questions
On 29 August 2025, the National Military Memorial Cemetery opened in the Kyiv region on the Day of Remembrance of the Defenders of Ukraine. The cemetery sits on a 260 hectare plot between the villages of Hatne and Markhalivka.
Finding and agreeing on a location for the national war cemetery took several years. Environmentalists and public activists opposed the initial plan to place it in the Lysa Hora tract. Later, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law to establish the cemetery in Bykivnia, home to a national historical reserve and memorial to thousands of victims of Soviet terror buried there in mass graves. This plan was ultimately abandoned, however, because parts of the surrounding forest remain unexplored and could contain undiscovered burials.
The latest version of the National Military Memorial Cemetery faced criticism mainly for environmental reasons, including the high groundwater level, which poses a risk of flooding graves, and large-scale tree cutting, as reported by Suspilne and Rubryka.
Despite these warnings and protests, the cemetery was opened. Its location, about an hour’s drive from the center of Kyiv, makes it difficult for many visitors to reach. Concerns remain about potential flooding of burial sites, as well as broader environmental issues, such as the widespread use of artificial flowers and wreaths in Ukraine.
European Exemplars
The Marzahn Park Cemetery in Berlin, founded in 1909, spans approximately 21 hectares. From 1936, it housed a concentration camp for Roma and Sinti, through which a total of 1,500 people passed. The site also includes the Soviet Honor Grove, established in 1958 for the burial of soldiers and restored in 2019. In addition, the cemetery contains memorials to those who died in both world wars – such as forcibly mobilized workers and anti-fascists.
The section for Soviet soldiers is located deep within the cemetery, separated from the rest of the grounds by a neatly trimmed hedge. From a distance, the style is strikingly familiar: red granite, a tall pedestal, and a star on top – reminiscent of the memorial to World War II dead in Kryvyi Rih, though on a smaller scale.
What sets this “Soviet” section apart from typical Ukrainian memorials is its integration into the surroundings. All memorial elements are harmoniously incorporated into the landscape. The entrance features a floral ornament that blends organically with the hedge. Even in autumn, when leaves fall, the contrast of red granite with the intertwined branches of the hedge creates a distinct and evocative atmosphere.
The park-cemetery itself serves as a model of environmental harmony. Leaves, trees, and grass cover the area, while birds and even squirrels animate the space. In 1995, it was added to the Berlin register of monuments as a Gartendenkmal – a “garden monument” which, German Wikipedia notes, effectively unites a memorial and burial ground with a recreational green oasis alongside the densely populated district of Marzahn.
A parallel naturally arises between Berlin’s Marzahn Park Cemetery and the Kryvyi Rih Central Cemetery, where the section for graves of the honored dead is now being developed. The Kryvyi Rih cemetery is located near Skhidnyi, one of the city’s most densely populated districts. Such density, combined with the proximity of one of Kryvyi Rih’s largest ravines, the Kaletina Ravine (historically called Naliotana), with its rich flora and fauna, as well as surrounding agricultural lands, could inspire the transformation of the section, and eventually the entire Central Cemetery, into a memorial landscape park similar to Berlin’s Marzahn.
In July 2025, Stankevych visited several European military cemeteries and shared her reflections on the Facebook page of the Community of Families of Kryvyi Rih Heroes.
Remarking on the Fleury-devant-Douaumont National Necropolis and Ossuary near Verdun in France, the location of the main sites of the Verdun National Memorial, Stankevych noted that local limestone was used in the construction and decoration – a durable material that lends the memorial a sense of restraint and dignity.
It should be noted that in Kryvyi Rih, the project also envisions the use of local material – Tokivskyi granite, quarried in the Kryvyi Rih district. However, for aesthetic and economic reasons, many families of the fallen opposed this choice.
Stankevych describes the cemetery near Douaumont as “more than just a burial – it is a lesson in dignity, honor, and silence.” The territory is covered with a flawless green lawn, and beside each cross or Muslim stele grows a rose – the same for everyone, with not a single dry leaf in sight. Nearby stands a monument to Jewish soldiers who died in battle, marked with the Star of David and the traditional Hebrew phrase “ת.נ.צ.ב.ה.” – an abbreviation for “May his soul be bound in the bond of eternal life.”
She also recalls the Bayeux War Cemetery, saying it carries the atmosphere of a “garden of memory” without pomp or excess. It feels more like a park or a nature reserve: a well-kept hedge outlines the perimeter, low perennial plants grow by modest identical headstones, and here and there stand neatly trimmed trees. Notably, there was no plastic, only a dozen or so wreaths near the central figure of the memorial, and fresh flowers, but none wrapped in cellophane.
The Skogskyrkogarden cemetery in Stockholm is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. As Yaryna Skurativska notes in a review for Ukrinform, it is not a typical military burial site – Sweden has remained neutral for over 200 years, and its soldiers did not die in wars. Yet this cemetery-park serves as a model of integrating natural landscapes with commemorative spaces for many memorial sites worldwide.
Instead of a leveled, formally defined area, the cemetery was designed as a memorial park embedded within the forest. Work began in 1917 on the site of an abandoned quarry overgrown with pine trees, and the first stage was completed within three years. The architects’ use of the natural landscape created a remarkable atmosphere of serene beauty, profoundly influencing cemetery design globally.
Unfortunately, the design of the Kryvyi Rih Memorial has not been influenced by the “forest cemetery” model – at least, not yet.
Nature is the Best Teacher
Will the resting place of the honored soldiers in Kryvyi Rih turn into a full-fledged memorial, will it become a memorial cemetery, or will it acquire some other status? No matter how it develops, the environmental risks and threats are already obvious. Key among them are the use of non-ecological plastic flowers and wreaths, the choice of irrelevant plants for landscaping the territory, the critical lack of planned landscaping, the lack of a city strategy for waste disposal, and the lack of educational work at the city level regarding the necessity and advantages of using perennial, low-growing plants in landscaping the burials in the section.
Some of the environmental issues listed could be addressed without significant additional costs. For example, an educational campaign about perennial plants suitable for landscaping could be run through information channels managed by local authorities, such as social media pages or a municipal TV channel. Similarly, educational work could promote the need to sort waste generated at burial sites and to compost organic materials.
Some steps are already under way. After Trotner examined the plants on the graves, identified them, and provided guidance on which species to plant, families of those buried here reached out to her to talk about ways to make grave decoration more thoughtful and environmentally friendly, reducing the number of plastic flowers and wreaths.
Both Trotner and Yurii Benhus, senior lecturer in botany at Kharkiv State Pedagogical University, identified plant species best suited for landscaping the area. Among trees, they recommended common oak, Tatar maple (drought-resistant, compact, and decorative), and small-leaved elms, as well as birch. For herbaceous plants, they suggested stonecrop and various perennial species.
During a visit to the cemetery, Trotner spotted sprouts of honey locust and ailanthus trees growing in the flowerbed of one grave. She explained that these needed to be removed, as their roots could eventually damage the tombstone. She then contacted the cemetery supervisor, explained the risk, and together they removed the sprouts. Caring for the environment, especially in a place as significant as this is meant to be, is not difficult – it only requires attention, as neglect is what causes problems to begin with.
Olha Honchar (Khvostova) is editor-in-chief of Expertkr, where this article originally appeared in Ukrainian. The present text is a shorter version of the English translation published by Rubryka. Republished by permission.
