Vasily from Chelyabinsk Region was training to be a welder. He had only a few months left until graduation...

Vasily from the Chelyabinsk region was training to be a welder. He had only a few months left until graduation, but in December 2023 he was drafted into the army. The young man was 19.

During his service, he wrote to his instructor that he regretted not finishing his studies. “When I get back, I’ll finish,” Vasily promised. In April 2024, he was transferred to the border in the Kursk region.

Vasily’s mother Yulia received her last message from him on August 6, the day of the large-scale AFU offensive. In all the following days she kept calling, but got no answer. Then she went to the draft office and filed a search request. A notice came saying that her son was missing in action.

In September, Vasily’s fellow conscripts returned from captivity. One of them said that the conscript was killed by a tank shell back on August 10. The body still has not been found.

Yulia has two other sons. The eldest, despite his mother’s pleas, signed a contract and is now at the front. Soon their father signed a contract as well. He was taken prisoner and returned from captivity in serious condition.

Yulia’s youngest son is now 17, he has already finished school and is thinking about studying at a technical college, but is “not sure.”

“With the army, of course, yes, the issue comes up first,” Yulia says. “I will petition to make sure they don’t take the boy.”

“Verstka” and “Important Stories” established that there were at least 344 conscripts in the border zone of the Kursk region in 2024. Seventy-seven of them were killed, and more than 30 remain missing.

Read the accounts of eyewitnesses to those events and their relatives in the investigation (with VPN):

Link not working? Read here.

😘 Subscribe to @svobodnieslova and donate — we work thanks to you

Verstka

Conscripts at War

In August 2024, the AFU offensive in the Kursk region was met by hundreds of conscript soldiers. What happened to them afterward is the subject of an investigation by “Verstka” and “Important Stories”