Families of 54 Missing Ukrainians Seek Answers a Month After Nepal-China Floods

More than a month after catastrophic flooding tore through the Nepal-China border region, the families of dozens of missing Ukrainian travellers are still waiting for answers about what happened to their relatives.

Among them is Olena Kalynychenko, 36, who was part of a group of 56 people, most of them Ukrainians, who had travelled to Mount Kailash in Tibet for a spiritual retreat. Her last known location was a border post where she exited China at 10:22 a.m. local time — roughly 15 minutes before the flood struck.

Her partner, Oles Visich, said the couple's final exchange came on August 25. In a message, Kalynychenko told him the retreat was ending and that the group would spend the next day travelling by bus to Kathmandu. She had also bought chrysanthemum tea in China, he recalled, and spoke of sharing it with him once she was home.

The group disappeared while heading from China to Nepal on their journey back. The Chinese government has told at least two families that their relatives left Chinese territory before the flooding began, but it has not been possible to confirm whether they crossed into Nepal, because Nepal's immigration complex and its records were destroyed in the disaster.

For relatives in Ukraine, information has been scarce. Stanislav Solohub, whose brother and sister-in-law went missing on August 25, said the family has had no direct word from authorities and has relied on figures published online showing how many people have been found, how many are alive, how many have died and how many are still unaccounted for.

The scale of the disaster has made rescue, recovery and identification painfully slow. The floods killed more than 1,400 people and left more than 6,000 missing, most of them on the Nepali side of the border. Nepal has said 636 foreign nationals remain missing, including 54 Ukrainians. China has reported 261 foreign nationals missing on its side, among them one Ukrainian.

Nepal says it has recovered 1,451 bodies, but only 112 have so far been handed over to families.

In the absence of official word, relatives have turned to posters and public lists of the missing, while memorial flowers have been placed near the Gyirong Port crossing on the Chinese side of the border.