On November 18, the Lviv City Council issued a shocking announcement to local public opinion, confirming that there are currently only 20 vacant lots left in the city's military cemetery to bury the soldiers who died in battle.
The situation was described as "alarming" and urgent. The city government said it is urgently searching for a new burial site and specific information about the site will be released soon to address rising demand for burial.
The fact that Lviv - a city located close to the Polish border and hundreds of kilometers away from hot fronts in the East such as Donbass or Kursk - is in a state of "burning" burial is a sign of a harsh reality. It shows that the flow of people to the battlefield from the front line to the rear is still continuous and at a large scale, beyond the capacity of existing infrastructure.
Information about overloaded cemeteries appears in the context of the issue of casualties always being an extremely sensitive topic in Ukraine.
Since the conflict broke out, President Volodymyr Zelensky's government has applied a strict security policy, refusing to disclose the official death toll in the army and considering it a national secret during the war to maintain armament.
However, indirect signs are becoming increasingly difficult to hide. National Assembly deputies and Ukrainian military commanders have recently often complained publicly in the media about the serious shortage of personnel on the battlefield, forcing the government to continuously tighten military recruitment regulations and general mobilization.
On Moscow's side, the Russian news agency also gave a notable estimate. Based on separate calculations, Russia believes that the total losses of the Ukrainian armed forces since the conflict began (February 24, 2022) have reached nearly 1.5 million people, including both dead and wounded.
Although the figure of 1.5 million people is estimated by Russia and has not been verified by independent organizations, the reality in Lviv is somewhat reinforcing the assessment of the severity of the conflict.
With the cemeteries in the most peaceful rear areas no longer having any empty space, the price of the conflict is more present than ever for the Ukrainian people.
