Together with a small team of committed volunteers, Konstantin Dobrovolski, 70, has dedicated his life to finding, identifying and reburying the remains of more than 100,000 Soviet troops who are believed to have died on the very northern part of the Soviet defence line.
“When we started our work in the early 80s, there were more bodies than mushrooms. We have found the remains of 20,000 soldiers,” Dobrovolski said.
But these days, death is on his mind more than ever.
“Every day I am confronted with the grim consequences of war. But it seems like our nation didn’t learn the right lesson from history,” he said as the conversation quickly turned to the war in Ukraine.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Armed with little more than a map, a shovel and an old metal detector, Dobrovolski has scoured the hostile landscape of Russia’s far north for the last 33 years in search of the long-forgotten remains of Soviet second world war soldiers.
“Just today we found the remains of five soldiers, some bones and old medals,” he said, speaking to the Guardian during a research trip outside the Arctic town of Murmansk.
Soon after the invasion began last year, a hashtag slogan popped up on the streets of Moscow to boost support for the war in Ukraine: “We don’t leave ours behind.”
Pointing to the sinister slogan “we can do it again,” which has gained popularity on Victory Day in recent years, he said his country “appeared to have forgotten that war is a tragedy, its pain and suffering”.
After having recovered the remains of thousands of Soviet soldiers, last spring he had to bury his own son who died fighting near Bakhmut as part of the notorious Wagner group.
He did not have a chance to say goodbye to Sergei but said that he recognised his son in drone footage posted by the Ukrainian army on social media days before his reported death.
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