The quiet of a Kyiv cemetery is broken by a trumpet salute, then a burst of rifle fire.
Soldiers stretch a Ukrainian flag over a shiny wooden coffin and stand silently alongside in the sparkling white snow. A woman cries, her face crumpling.
Natalia is burying her husband for the second time.
Vitaly was killed three years ago fighting in the eastern Donbas and his first grave was in their home town of Slovyansk. But Russian forces have advanced since then and the area is increasingly under attack.
So Natalia had her husband's grave exhumed and Vitaly's remains moved hundreds of miles to Ukraine's capital.
When we buried him in Slovyansk, land was being liberated and we thought the war would soon end, Natalia explains, after the reburial ceremony conducted with military honours.
But the frontline is constantly moving closer and I was scared Vitaly might end up under occupation.
Vitaly was a ceramics artist who volunteered to defend his country in the early days of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
He didn't want to, but he had to do it. He was a patriot, Natalia explains, through her tears. She was pregnant when her husband was killed and he never got to meet their daughter.
The decision to move Vitaly's body from the land where he was born and fought was extremely painful.
It was very hard, emotionally. But it was the right decision, Natalia is sure. It would have been far harder to leave him, to know that he had stayed.
Ukrainians are facing unimaginable choices now as the US tries to broker a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv, but Russia pushes on with its invasion.
Meanwhile, the most pressure for compromise is on Kyiv. At some point, US-led talks will hone in on the most sensitive issue of all: the status of land in the eastern Donbas region that so many men have died defending.
Kyiv proposes freezing the fighting there, ceding nothing more. But Moscow wants to be handed control over the rest of the region and the US is thought to agree.
Life in Slovyansk has turned increasingly grim with attacks every couple of days. Natalia expresses her relief at having her husband closer to her and their daughter, Vitalina.
[She] watches videos of him, looks at photos and she loves him very much even though they never met, Natalia smiles. She also hopes to tell her husband soon that she's pregnant using the sperm the couple had frozen just days before his death.
As the war rages on, Natalia's story reflects the heartbreaking reality faced by many families in Ukraine, struggling against a backdrop of loss and the desire for peace.