- Svitlana Holyk didn't know her brother had fought and died in Ukraine until reporters contacted her.
- Holyk also didn't know her brother had been imprisoned and joined the Wagner prisoner army.
A Ukrainian woman didn't know that her brother had gone to Russian prison or fought and died in Russia's war against Ukraine until reporters told her, according to reporting from Reuters.
Svitlana Holyk told Reuters that she believed her brother, Yury Danilyuk, was working somewhere near Russia's Arctic north and had last heard from him in 2016.
She didn't know he died last year until hearing from Reuters journalists doing a story on Russia's Wagner Group, a private military contractor closely linked to the Kremlin that, according to the White House, has about 10,000 mercenaries and 40,000 former prisoners deployed across Ukraine.
When reporters contacted Holyk, it was the first time she heard that Danilyuk had been imprisoned in Russia on drug charges, had joined the Wagner army of prisoners to fight in Russia's war against Ukraine, and had died while fighting.
"I suspected then that something had happened, that he might have some troubles that he did not want to or could not talk about for some reason," Holyk told Reuters. "The fact that Yury died I learned from you. I re-read your message several times when you wrote to me. Somehow I couldn't believe it."
The Wagner Group was founded in 2014, in part by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with close ties to Putin. Reuters reported that in the last six months, many Russian prisoners had been offered a pardon if they fought in the Ukraine war.
Reporters found Danilyuk's grave in the Russian Krasnodar village of Bakinskaya in late January. The graveyard has become a burial ground for members of the Wagner prisoner army.
According to the grave, Danilyuk died on November 30, 2022, at 28 years old.