Time to read: 8 minutes(s)

A girl is crying at the grave of a young man. She lies in the sand, under a cross, and rakes the earth under herself.

"No one will ever know anything about him. He was killed. And nothing will happen again," she screams.

The section of the Tyumen cemetery where men who died in the war are buried is a terrifying place. Last December, there were 18 graves there, mostly those of military academy graduates who were thrown into Ukrainian territory in the first days of the war.

There are now over a hundred graves. Half of Special Section 28 is occupied. The rows are unfinished. They are awaiting replenishment.

The day I arrived, there was a strong wind. All the flags were standing, the fabric flapping. It felt as if a metronome was silently ticking away eternity for those hundred flags lying in the ground.

One hundred men. One hundred families. Two hundred grief-stricken parents. One hundred wives. Children, grandparents, other relatives. That's a thousand grief-stricken people in total. The price of war in one city. A war that is still forbidden to be called by that word. And that price grows every day.

At the beginning of the military sector, monuments have already been erected. The first soldiers buried here are: 18-year-old Andrei Ogibalov, 32-year-old Grigory Turubarov, 36-year-old Aleksandr Dyakov, 36-year-old Sergei Sidorov, 25-year-old Danila Dopua, 28-year-old Roman Lekchalov, 26-year-old Daniil Deyev, 36-year-old Aleksandr Fedorov, Sergei Botanogov, Vasily Vasilyev, Aleksandr Okulov, Ivan Polubezhentsev, Aleksandr Ivanchikov, Aleksandr Smirnov, 19-year-old Ilnur Arslanbekov, Igor Nesterenko, Sergei Ponkratov, and Igor Kozhushko.

The second half of the sector is still covered with fresh sand. There are graves visited by relatives—fresh flowers, pectoral crosses, and personal belongings of the deceased—berets, toys, cigarettes, and cups of coffee from a trendy Tyumen coffee shop. Several graves have remained unchanged since the burial; there's no one to visit them.

The last grave, marked June 28, 2023, is quite recent. The burial was recent. A Cossack lies there. Andrey Zaitsev. He volunteered for war in the fall of 2022. He didn't receive a draft notice, so he decided to enlist himself, became a signalman, and was killed near Bakhmut. He informed his family of his decision to fight only just before his departure. He died of blood loss.

36-year-old Albert Goncharov He died in January 2023. A marble monument already stands at the grave, and the surrounding area is covered with rubble. The last photo shows Albert in uniform. He was a member of the Wagner PMC. The Goncharov family is clearly proud of this—they even inscribed the unit's symbol on the tombstone.

There are many Wagnerites at the cemetery. Flags flutter over their graves like black birds. One of them is a 49-year-old man with two convictions. Sergey MezdrinIn 2020, the Leninsky District Court of Tyumen sentenced a criminal group that extorted money, seized businesses, and threatened people. Mezdrin was also a member of the organized crime group. He received a 14-year prison sentence.

Right here, in the recently dug rows, there is the grave of a 36-year-old Evgeniya Gladkikh. The photo shows a boy in an army uniform. The sign above the picture is typical, Wagnerian, with a Virgin Mary weeping in pain, surrounded by wreaths.

Gladkikh was a member of a particularly brutal gang that operated in Tyumen from 2008 to 2017. It was called the "FSB Gang." The group of five, three of whom were active members of the Federal Security Service of Russia, killed businessmen for money, taxi drivers for their cars, and migrants to check their ammunition. Over a nine-year period, they killed seven people. The group was uncovered by police searching for the migrant killers.

One participant committed suicide in pretrial detention, one escaped, and three others were sentenced to 12, 24, and 25 years in prison. Yevgeny Gladkikh, an FSB warrant officer, received a quarter-century sentence.. He was not the leader of the gang, but he carried out all of its orders, which is why he received the longest sentence of all the surviving members of the organized crime group.

When Wagner PMC recruiters arrived at the colony, Gladkikh, like others from his gang, signed the contract without hesitation. The former FSB officers worked as military instructors. Gladkikh was not spared.

Alexander TolokonnikovHe was 39 years old when he died in Ukraine. The photo shows a grown soldier in uniform. The grave is decorated with the signature wreaths bearing the Russian coat of arms. Beneath the cross is a child's drawing of cranes, and next to it is a plate of cookies and candies. Tolokonnikov died in early April and was buried only on the 20th. His sister's social media profile features a photo of her brother in uniform. She is proud that he was a member of the Wagner PMC.

A sister has created a video recording of her memories of the deceased soldier. Roman ShmakovHe passed away in early May 2023. He joined the Wagner PMC and sent voice messages to his sister from the war: "Hi everyone, I miss you, God bless you." The woman accompanied her brother's obituary with the words: "I don't know how long the conflict will last, but how can we learn to hear and understand each other? The highest love in Orthodoxy is to give one's life for another. I hope the dead boys are in a better world.".

In the front row of the Walk of Fame lies Daniil DeevIn the photo, he's wearing a handsome blue uniform. His 26-year-old senior lieutenant, commander of an engineering and technical platoon, was buried in the summer of 2022. He wanted to be a soldier since the 8th grade; he was his parents' only son. He fought in Ukraine for six days. Now he lies here. Many family and friends attended the funeral; only his wife, who was pregnant, did not attend.

Nearby -  Namik NamazovThe young officer was buried in April, and nothing was heard of him for six months. He graduated from the Tyumen Military Academy only last year.

Victor Devyatiyarov Back in 2019, I was looking for a job as a security guard—I wanted to go north on a rotational basis. He described himself in his resume: "I approach my work with great care and complete seriousness! I'm always attentive and strive for perfect execution. I enjoy working in a team and complete assigned tasks at any cost, within reason. I approach everything responsibly, regardless of how it affects the outcome."" How he ended up in the Wagner PMC is unknown, but he died in January 2023, near Bakhmut. His grave bears the standard wreaths, cross, and plaque.

Missing in action Valeria Zyatkova He was buried almost a year after his death. A bunch of red roses were brought to the grave of 30-year-old Roman Barabanov, who died in May, under a photo of him smiling in a khaki jacket with a V-shaped patch, sitting by a tree. A lamp and candy stand at Maxim Kalashnikov's grave.

Sergei Sidorov died on May 15, 2022. He is survived by his mother, wife, and 12-year-old son. 

56-year-old military man Daniyar Kadyrov died on April 17 near Bakhmut.

Graves, graves, graves…. Let's name the names of those who were recorded: Evgeny Kazantsev, Sergey Vasilyev, Albert Goncharov, Vladimir Kostylev, Vitaly Sazonov, Vladimir Orekhov, Dmitry Yuryev, Evgeny Gladkikh, Nikolay Ulyanov, Evgeny Tolstikov, Oleg Odintsov, Andrey Shcherbakov, Sergey Mezdrin, Vladimir Cheremnykh, Roman Samokhin, Alexander Tolokonnikov, Evgeny Sadakov, Vladimir Parshin, Roman Shmakov, Sergey Fisher, Evgeny Chichulin, Georgy Grigorets, Viktor Devyatiyarov, Sergey Sludnikov, Sergey Funtikov, Valery Zhernokliev, Pavel Gabulyan, Eduard Pakhtusov, Denis Nasekin, Andrey Zaitsev, Sergey Sokolov, Roman Barabanov, Igor Chertushkin, Denis Serbinov, Nikita Konoval, Maxim Kalashnikov, Valery Zyatkov, Semyon Timofeev, Sergey Shabanov, Oleg Polomonov, Bakhtiyar Shermanov, Rinat Rafikov, Maxim Tolopov, Nikita Ushakov, Andrey Kholodov, Sergei Kuklich, Dmitry Alexandrovsky, Daniyar Kadyrov.

The Tyumen authorities are not prepared to publicly pronounce their names; their deaths are a matter solely for their families and relatives.

The authorities do not officially acknowledge that Sector 28 on the Chervyshevsky Highway has been designated specifically for the burial of those killed in Ukraine. To say so would be to admit that the people whom Governor Oleksandr Moor, Deputy Governor Pavel Belyavsky, and Regional Military Commissar Oleksiy Kulichkov are so zealously escorting from the train station will die.

The governor's official accounts spent the past year covering everything from choosing a site for a student campus to issuing orders to deputies and gubernatorial readings—but not the deaths of Tyumen residents in the war. Now he's holding elections, and the local agenda, already sanitized by propagandists, has become even more saccharine. There are no problems in the region, much less any related to loss of life.

Meanwhile, a place for a new burial is being prepared at the cemetery.