'They sent my son's "body" - three years later I was told he's alive'

A mum has described grieving for her son after being told he was killed in battle by Russia - only to discover three years later he was still alive. Nazar Daletskyi, 46, went missing in action while on the front line in Donbas in May 2022, only three months after Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine . Mum Nataliya, 73, received one last phone call from her son telling her their trench was surrounded before she suddenly lost contact, with an unknown caller later telling her that Nazar "has been taken prisoner". It began months of agonising searching across military records, social media and Facebook groups for information - but one year later, she was contacted by military officials with devastating news. They told her that Nazar's body had been found and identified, and would soon be returned to her in a body bag. She was advised against seeing him due to the badly charred state of his remains, and he was eventually given a family burial. Ukrainian Natalia was only weeks away from erecting a memorial stone when in February, she received another call - this time telling her that her son was alive, and was returning home as part of a prisoner swap with Russia. In a viral video showing the first time the mum and son spoke in three years, she is seen saying: "My God, how long I've waited for you, my precious child! "All through that time I had been going to church, praying for a miracle and it was answered." It soon transpired Nazar, who came to be known as "the Resurrected One" among Ukranians, had no idea his family believed him to be dead. He was completely baffled when, during a phone call, his mother asked if he was missing any limbs, and Natalia revealed that she had been trying to make sense of the mix-up - telling the the Sunday Times that she "thought perhaps that his arm or leg had been sent back" and "that was what had been identified". But after the initial wave of sheer relief subsided, Natalia began to question why she had been told her son had died in the first place - and discovered she was far from alone. In a similar case, 34-year-old Bogdan Vovk was pronounced dead and buried last year in Humenets, western Ukraine, only to be later identified in Russian captivity. The body mistakenly believed to be his has since been exhumed. As for Natalia, she has yet to receive an apology. Instead, officials initially demanded she return the 15 million hryvnia (£250,000) in compensation she had received, a portion of which she had already used to pay for his £3,000 memorial. Issues with overflowing mortuaries due to high demand and outdated testing facilities are thought to be contributing the issue of misidentified bodies. The Ukrainian government is pushing to implement mandatory dental X-rays and fingerprinting for all service members upon enlistment to ensure accurate post-mortem identification.