The Woman Who Ditched the High Life to Hunt for Missing Bodies of U.S. Soldiers

KYIV—The vehicle carrying fallen soldiers pulled into the courtyard of the morgue in Ukraine’s eastern city of Dnipro at dusk. Iryna Khoroshayeva, an elegant former events manager, was watching on with high hopes. “Maybe this will be my lucky day, and I’ll finally find my beautiful American,” she said.

Her mission in this brutal war is to search, recover and expatriate the bodies of international voluntary soldiers. Since Sept. 22, when she learned about missing Californian Jericho Skye, Khoroshayeva has been on a relentless search for him around eight morgues in eastern Ukraine.

Animated by belief in the black and white moral cause of the Ukraine war, hundreds of Americans, including Skye, a tall, handsome 26-year-old construction worker, arrived in Ukraine in the early days of the war and continued to fight or to investigate war crimes even amid signs that the U.S. governmental support is wavering. Skye is believed to have been killed on a battlefield in the Donetsk region in early September.

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