Fight till victory, says soldier's widow as Ukraine military deaths rise

Oksana Dudar, widow of Victor Dudar, reacts as she talks about the killing of her husband, an army reservist who volunteered to fight, following the Russian invasion.

Before he left for the front, Ukrainian military reservist Viktor Dudar hugged his wife Oksana and told her not to worry.

And every day he was away, fighting the advancing Russian forces, he found time to message or call her. "I'm alive," he wrote once. "Everything is okay."

Then on March 3, a week after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the messages stopped. Three days later, Oksana's worst fears were confirmed when a priest and some soldiers arrived at her door.

"They entered the house and said, 'Your husband is a hero,'" recalled Oksana, 47. "No other words were needed." Her husband had died in a hail of Russian rockets.