A Ukrainian volunteer who spent two decades recovering war dead — including Russian soldiers — was killed by a landmine last week, and the American press expects you to open your wallet before you finish mourning him.

Oleksiy Yukov was 40. He founded an organization called Platsdarm, meaning "Bridgehead," and became known as a "collector of souls" for his tireless work exhuming remains from fields, forests, and ruins across eastern Ukraine. He recovered Ukrainian soldiers, Russian soldiers, and civilians alike — because he believed every body deserved a burial. Thousands gathered at Kyiv's Saint Volodymyr Cathedral on Saturday to pay respects. His widow, Evhenyia Kaluhyna, sobbed over his open casket and promised to continue his work. His daughter Diana said he "honored the dead and healed the living."

This is a real man who did real good. Both AP and NPR covered his funeral with appropriate respect. But neither outlet so much as hinted at the question that matters most to the Americans reading their dispatches: how much longer are we expected to fund the meat grinder that consumed him?

Yukov had already lost an eye and suffered leg injuries in a mine blast in 2022, according to AP. He went back to the front line anyway. He wrote on social media last month: "Remote mines, shelling, drones — everything is against you. But you go and do everything to ensure that every soul returns home." He also rejected calls to leave Russian bodies behind: "When they say: 'Let them rot,' I do not agree. This is how we fight for every soul."

That conviction — that even the enemy dead deserve dignity — is exactly the kind of humanity the press exploits to keep the money flowing. NPR quoted Yukov saying in a documentary that "the war will not end as long as souls wander." A poetic line, and a true one. But the policy implication is the opposite of what the lobby intends: if wandering souls prolong the war, then ending the war is the urgent task — not extending it with another round of American artillery and appropriations.

Yukov told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that Russia "started a war against us; it is ruining our cities and killing our people. But we remain human even in these circumstances and gather their military's dead bodies." He was right about the humanity. He was also living proof that this conflict grinds on with no resolution in sight — just more bodies to collect, more mines to step on, more widows to weep over caskets.

The American press covers every funeral, every bombed apartment block, every frontline sacrifice. What it never covers with equal vigor is the domestic cost: the communities crumbling, the border overrun, the fentanyl killing our own. Hundreds of billions have been shipped east while American infrastructure rots. Both parties agreed on every package. That bipartisan consensus is where the public gets sold.

Yukov deserved better than the war that killed him. Americans deserve better than being told their only acceptable role is to pay for the next one.