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May 10, 2019

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Unearthing Soviet soldiers鈥 remains lost in WWII battle

A SKULL and bones laid out carefully on a piece of oilcloth are all that remain of a Red Army soldier who died fighting the Nazis outside Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg.

Thanks to volunteers who carry out regular digs at battlefield sites outside the city, the soldier will finally be buried decades after the end of the war. The digs began in the 1980s.

Some 42,000 people are involved in looking for remains of Soviet soldiers across the country.

Every spring, groups go to a hilly area called Sinyavino to the east of Saint Petersburg that saw heavy fighting from 1941 to 1944, as Soviets attempted to break through a Nazi blockade.

One such group is called Ingria 鈥 a historic name for the region 鈥 that was formed in 2000.

Two dozen Ingria volunteers were spending a fortnight camping out in Sinyavino.

Ranging in age from 15 to 65, they used spades and metal detectors to search in overgrown woodland.

The group seeks to identify each soldier and pay final respects before burying them in military cemeteries.

鈥淲hen you are there at the dig, you realize what price was paid for victory and how hard and cruel war was,鈥 said chemist Alexei Chupikov, 30.

At Sinyavino, trenches and shell holes are still visible and volunteers turn up shell casings, hand grenades, helmets, coins and medals.

Ingria 鈥渇ound the remains of 16 soldiers here鈥 on their latest dig, said the group鈥檚 leader, 64-year-old historian Yevgeny Ilyin.

Over the last two decades, Ingria volunteers alone have found the remains of more than 3,000 Soviet soldiers.

A total of 714 soldiers found by groups at Sinyavino were interred in nearby military cemeteries this week.

One of the soldiers, Pyotr Novikov, who died in 1942 was identified through his name scratched on a flask. The diggers managed to track down his niece Maria Gavrilova, 60.

鈥淲e鈥檙e so grateful,鈥 she said. 鈥淥ur family thought he was missing in action, but now he isn鈥檛 any longer.鈥


 

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