‘He couldn’t wait to join’: thousands of young Russians die in Ukraine war
Moscow is spending millions to try to mould a new generation willing to give their lives in military service
Pjotr Sauer | 29 May 2024 | 08.30 EDTShortly after turning 18 in February, Daniil Yermolenko fulfilled a long-held wish and signed a contract with Russia’s armed forces. A month later, he voted for the first time, casting a ballot in the presidential election for Vladimir Putin, who had already been in power for six years when Yermolenko was born in 2006.
By late March Yermolenko had completed a basic two-week military training, and he was sent to Berdychi in eastern Ukraine where Russian forces were engaged in a devastating assault as part of its spring offensive.
There, on 4 April, during a storming of a Ukrainian position, Yermolenko found himself separated from his unit, surrounded by intense enemy fire. Before losing contact, Yermolenko reportedly radioed his base: “This is it guys. I am doomed.”
Last week his family and friends gathered in a small town in central Russia to receive Yermolenko’s casket, which was draped in the Russian flag. . .
. . . “I am proud of Daniil,” Maksim said. “He always said he wanted to fight Nazis and fascists there,” he added, repeating some of the false narratives popularised at home by the Kremlin to try to justify its war on Ukraine.
Thousands of young Russians, often referred to as “Generation P” for having lived only under Putin’s presidency, have died fighting in Ukraine. Mediazona, a Russian outlet that tracks war casualties using open sources, has identified nearly 5,000 soldiers under the age of 24 who have died in the war, including 1,400 under the age of 20. The real toll is likely to be much higher, the outlet says.
Russia portrays these fallen men, many of whom hail from the hinterlands, as heroes. And the Kremlin has gone to great lengths to make sure many more young people join the fighting as Putin seeks to re-engineer the country into a militarised society. . .
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/29/thousands-of-russian-youth-die-in-ukraine-war
