Nataliia Yaremenko
Wife of a missing servicemember
Nataliia Yaremenko from Kramatorsk and Oleksandr from Brovary were married on November 11, 2024. Just 11 days later, on November 22, Oleksandr — a soldier of the 117th Separate Mechanized Brigade — was declared missing in action under special circumstances.
Nataliia tells their story as if counting the knots of a rosary, not skipping a single day. They met in Kyiv during the full-scale war.
For a long time, their communication remained friendly — holiday greetings, supportive calls — until one day Oleksandr sent a message: “We’re just confusing each other — let’s decide: either something serious, or we go our separate ways, block each other, and that’s it.”
With her characteristic directness, Nataliia replied: “The second option.” But just a week later, he arrived in Kyiv with white roses, which became the symbol of their love.
He chose not to go in circles: “You have until November. I want to be with you, I want to get married.”
Nataliia always felt that her sky was protected, as Oleksandr served in air defense. They began planning their civil ceremony. The bride had one condition: no big wedding, no guests, no veil — just the two of them. And that’s exactly how it was: an intimate ceremony at the “New Civil Registry Office,” coffee from McDonald’s, and an evening at a restaurant.
Their happiness lasted two days. Then he left for his unit near Pokrovsk. Nataliia admits she had a premonition of trouble. “To the zero line?” she asked, afraid she might be seeing him for the last time.
When her husband did not reply to messages for three days, she woke up in the middle of the night screaming: “Sasha, I can’t feel you.” That invisible connection they had always shared suddenly broke.
Nataliia began her search: reaching out to commanders, calling the wives of his comrades, checking hospitals and lists of released prisoners. “If I knew where to look, I would probably have gone on foot already,” she says.
As of October 2025, nearly 70,000 people in Ukraine were listed as missing. Living with ambiguous loss is a trial that is hard to comprehend for those outside this circle. Nataliia says that before, she was 90% sure Sasha would return. After speaking with men who had survived captivity and shared its realities, she was left with 1% hope. But she holds on to it with all her strength.
«I have still set a goal for myself — to find my husband. Recently, an acquaintance asked me: ‘Do you still love him?’ I don’t know if it’s love, but I respect him deeply. And what we had in those short three months — I wish every woman could experience that. Some people live a whole life without feeling something like this. We dreamed about a son and dogs, we discussed every detail of our future».
Three months after Oleksandr went missing, Nataliia got a four-legged companion. Now the two of them are waiting together for Oleksandr to come home.