Two years ago on Valentine’s Day, Olha Chesnokova told Yevhen Volosyan she loved him. They had met a month earlier on Tinder, bonding over music. Ms. Chesnokova, a 46-year-old psychotherapist, said she had wanted “to wait for the right moment to tell him” — but not too long. Mr. Volosyan had decided to join the army, and soon they would be separated.
Two months later, Mr. Volosyan, 37, left for the front. He served as a radio operator, sapper and eventually drone pilot, remotely flying suicide quadcopters into Russian forces.
The couple married a few months into Mr. Volosyan’s service, with him briefly returning to Kyiv to say, “I do.” Back at the front, he would stay in touch with his new wife through text messages during the day and video calls at night, when darkness grounded the drones.
On Nov. 24, 2023, Ms. Chesnokova texted him around midday.
Ms. Chesnokova, reassured, went on with her day, waiting for sunset to reconnect with Mr. Volosyan. She checked in again around 5 p.m., but he didn’t answer.
Her husband had bought her a ticket to a concert that night of Serhii Zhadan, their favorite Ukrainian artist, and they had agreed that she would call him from the show, so he too could listen. But he didn’t show up online.