India, Aug. 9 -- Ukraine paid tribute on Saturday to Oleksiy Yukov, a volunteer who spent more than two decades recovering the bodies of civilians and soldiers - many of them Russian - killed by war. He was 40.

An Orthodox Christian service was held at the Cathedral of Saint Volodymyr, in central Kyiv, where thousands of people gathered to pay their respects following his death in a landmine explosion during a recovery mission on August 5.

Yukov founded the Platsdarm (''bridgehead'') organisation because he believed all the dead require a proper burial. He became known as a "collector of souls." Yukov, from the war-torn Donbas region, was a martial arts instructor. He began recovering the dead as a teenager after encountering the remain...