Watch: Thousands of flags placed by mourning Ukraine relatives in moving Kyiv tribute to fallen soldiers

The video shows a scene in Independence Square, Kyiv

Video footage taken by a resident of Kyiv, Ukraine, shows thousands of flags waving in the breeze in tribute to soldiers killed in the war against Russia.

The flags, in the city’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), have been placed by relatives of fallen soldiers killed in combat over the past two years since Russia’s invasion of the country.

Olga Kuzina, who moved to Edinburgh after the outbreak of war and has recently returned to her native Ukraine, filmed the moving footage as she walked through Kyiv.

Flags are laid to remember fallen soldiers in Kyiv's Independence Square. Picture: Olga Kuzina

“It's hard to see that so many people have died and it's heart-breaking when you take time to read what is written in the flags, like ‘I will love you forever’,” she said.

“But the hardest thing is to realise that almost all the people I know or their relatives are involved in a war now, in some way or another. And looking at this memorial makes me question, who is the next one?”

In February, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said 31,000 soldiers had been killed since the start of the conflict. However, a report issued by the US last year claimed as many as 70,000 military personnel had died and 120,000 had been injured.

In the video, candles placed in glass bottles around the outside of the area containing the flags are visible, as well as some framed photographs of fallen soldiers. By May 2022, three months after the war began, around 50 flags had been placed. Now, the number has swelled, covering the space in front of the Independence Monument.