‘I would have ripped up his passport’: A Canadian’s quest to bring son’s remains home from Ukraine’s front lines

Patrick Mazerolle left Canada to fight in Ukraine when he was 23. (Images courtesy of Mazerolle family)

Canadian Marc Mazerolle says he wants to help bring “peace to families” whose loved ones died on the battlefield as foreign fighters for Ukraine. A father himself, Mazerolle wants to help families through the agonizing process of having their loved ones’ bodies returned and buried close to home.

Peace is something Mazerolle himself is still searching for. His son Patrick Mazerolle’s remains are believed to still be on the battlefield in Ukraine, nine months after he was killed during a Russian drone attack.

Mazerolle believes that other Canadian families, as well as hundreds, if not thousands, of others around the world have been left to deal with the same tragic reality: their son or daughter has been killed on the battlefield; their remains have yet to be recovered.

On Feb. 15, 2025, then 23-year-old Patrick Mazerolle, from Inkerman, N.B., left for Europe. Patrick told his parents that he was going for a two-week vacation to the United Kingdom. A snowstorm meant that Patrick missed his first flight to the U.K. With tears in his eyes, his father tells CTV News that he actually purchased the plane ticket for his son, thinking he was doing him a fatherly favour.

“If I’d known what his plan actually was, I would have ripped up his passport on the spot,” says Mazerolle.

Tracking his son’s cell phone overseas, Mazerolle quickly realized Patrick wasn’t in the U.K.

“Once I was able to get a hold of him there was no way of changing his mind. He was there, in his mind, for the right reason. Those people (in Ukraine) needed help, and he was going to help them.”

Patrick isn’t Ukrainian and had no family or personal ties to Ukraine. He simply felt compelled to help and join the fight. Patrick had previously enlisted to join the Canadian military but eventually dropped out, deciding that it wasn’t the right fit for him.

CTV News has learned that Patrick was enlisted to fight with Ukraine’s Third Assault Brigade, First International Rifleman Battalion. For 94 days, he fought near the front lines in eastern Ukraine. On Sept. 1, 2025 Patrick was killed when a piece of shrapnel from a drone attack struck him in the head.

CTV News interviewed two foreign fighters who were with Patrick on the day he was killed. They asked that we not release their full names and only use their call signs for the purpose of this story.

Tarzan is from South Africa. Odin, who was previously enlisted in the United States Navy, was raised in Florida.

Shortly after both were sent to the front lines, they said, they met Patrick. They both credit Patrick with helping to save their lives during their initial anxious days on the front lines. Patrick showed them how to move from one position to the next while under a constant barrage of Russian artillery.

They share that on multiple occasions they watched Patrick run into enemy fire to retrieve a fallen soldier on the battlefield, saving multiple lives.

“He ran into an open field to grab one soldier. There are drones overhead. Drenched in blood, he just ran out there and grabbed this soldier, no overhead cover to protect him,” recalls Odin.

“He was there to save his buddy on that day, and that’s not the first time. There was another time one guy passed out, and a Ukrainian solider left the person behind, and Patrick ran back and got him. And so that’s the type of person Patrick was. He always wanted to help without fear of losing his own life,” says Tarzan.

Patrick spent weeks on the front lines with Odin and Tarzan as they worked together to escape death and defend the front.

“Slowly, but surely, everyone around us started to die around us, or they were heavily injured. So, at the end it was just Odin, Pat and I left to protect a large area along the front,” says Tarzan.

On the day Patrick was killed they were taking cover from “heavy, heavy shelling,” according to Tarzan. Odin and Patrick were pressed against each other underneath a fallen tree. Tarzan was behind a separate tree taking cover. Once the barrage ended, Odin called out, “Is everyone okay?”

Tarzan replied. Patrick was silent.

The two soldiers tell CTV News it appeared the shrapnel killed Patrick instantly.

Two days later, Mazerolle says he was contacted by a soldier who told him that his son had been killed in action. Two weeks later, he received the same call from the Canadian government. It took the Ukrainian military nearly three weeks to share that his son had been killed.

Ever since, he’s been working to have his son’s remains returned to Canada with limited assistance from the Canadian or Ukrainian government.

“I know exactly where Patrick’s remains are located, within 20 metres or so, in eastern Ukraine. He’s near Luhansk, near the Russian border on the eastern front. It’s constant shelling there, we can’t get to him,” shares Mazerolle.

Fighters deserve to be ‘buried properly’

Realizing a glaring gap in the system for families around the world, Mazerolle has now started his own organization called the International League of Prisoners of War and Missing in Action for the Families of the war in Ukraine. Families in Canada and around the world have started to reach out to him asking for help in locating their loved one’s remains that at present are still missing.

“My goal as an organization is to gather all the families from around the world, and other likeminded organizations, and create a central hub in Kyiv for everyone to work together from,” says Mazerolle.

“There are 90 countries involved in the war in Ukraine. Foreign fighters for both Ukraine and Russia have died and never been accounted for. We want to help families, no matter what side of the conflict their loved one fought for. These are human beings, like my son, they deserve to be accounted for and buried properly,” says Mazerolle.

“What we’re trying to create is the full spectrum for services, from retrieving, to DNA, to accessing the proper legal channels in Ukraine, to finally bringing their loved ones remains back home to their family,” he adds.

One year to the day after his son left for Ukraine, Mazerolle made his own journey into Kyiv in search of answers, in search of his son’s remains, and in an effort to get support to help get his organization off the ground. What he found was a system ill prepared to help families like his own, and some organizations who were there trying to profit off the war and the tragedy that has ensued.

CTV News reached out to the Ukrainian military asking what they’ve done to help the Mazerolle family retrieve their son’s remains.

An email in part states that, “From the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, the brigade command maintains full communication with the family of Patrick Mazerolle. Furthermore, the Embassy of Canada to Ukraine is aware of Patrick Mazerolle’s situation.”

Though for months the Mazerolle family say they’ve been waiting for confirmation that Patrick’s DNA, which they provided as well as his father Marc’s, has been uploaded in the database in Ukraine.

Global Affairs Canada declined to comment on what the Canadian Government can do to help families like the Mazerolle’s whose children went to fight on behalf of Ukraine and are now unaccounted for.

For Mazerolle, he says the return of his son’s remains would mean the world to him. Though he realizes he may need to wait until the war ends to be able to travel to where his son was killed in order to bring him home to be buried in New Brunswick.

“God bless his soul. Patrick doesn’t deserve to be left lying down on the ground after the sacrifice that he made. He’s not the only one. There are so many families out there still looking for their missing loved one, stolen by this horrific war,” says Mazerolle, as tears stream down his face.

For Mazerolle, time hasn’t been able to heal the wound of losing his only son. Though bringing him home may bring some sense of closure.

“My son Patrick started on a mission. I’m not going there to pick up a gun, but I’m going to finish this mission for him and bring him home to Canada, one way or another,” says Mazerolle.