Conscript Soldiers at War

Hi, this is Katya Krasotkina, and over the past few months I have written to more than a hundred conscripts who ended up in the Kursk region in August-September 2024, and to their loved ones. Together with my colleague from Important Stories, Yegor Feoktistov, we wanted to understand what happened two years ago.

Many stayed silent. Surviving conscripts explained that they were afraid. Mothers of the dead shared that it is still hard for them. One father wrote me a long message; here is part of it:

“I know that you are knocking in private messages to the mothers of the boys who died in Kursk. There is no need to talk about this yet. Now is not the time. Everything must be completed, only then will we be able to talk about it. Here, in general, we ourselves cannot understand what happened, and all the more so an outsider cannot. You surely understand that you are incapable of reflecting this whole story objectively. This is an incredibly deep and complex question. But first of all, for now there is no need to tear at mothers’ hearts, they are still overflowing with pain and continue to bleed. It is not yet time”

I disagree. It is precisely two years later that more information has appeared about the fates of the conscripts who ended up on the Kursk border. But not so much time has passed that it is impossible to find contacts and evidence: messages from relatives searching for soldiers, obituaries, interviews in captivity.

People can feel differently about the Kursk conscripts. But I know one thing for sure: the conscripts did not sign a contract and should not have ended up in this war. What happened to them two years ago broke their health and their psyche. And 77 conscripts were killed.

By the way, people are still responding to my old messages. I kept doing interviews when the text was already finished, although much of it simply did not fit there. It seems important to me to collect as much information as possible; perhaps one day Yegor and I will tell all these stories in some other format.

For now, read our texts. Mine, published in Verstka, has more details from the heroes’ personal lives and their experiences:

And in Yegor’s text in Important Stories there is a clear visualization of the positions where the conscripts were stationed and what happened to them during the AFU incursion:

Is the link not working? Read here.

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Verstka

Conscript Soldiers at War

In August 2024, hundreds of conscript soldiers met the AFU offensive in the Kursk region. What became of them is the subject of an investigation by Verstka and Important Stories