Alive or dead?
Former prisoner Sergei Lorsanov returned to his family from the war in a zinc coffin. Then they recognized him among the prisoners. Now they are waiting for Sergei. And they are afraid.
Just a few seconds of dark video. A man in winter clothes lets freezing, lightly dressed people pass, checking their names against lists. Their faces are barely visible. The image quickly transitions to other scenes. People on a bus shout, "Thank you to the Ministry of Defense and our president! Hurray-hurray-hurray!" and wave, saying, "I'll be there soon, Mom, wait for me." That's how it is in Russia. showedOn January 3rd of this year, servicemen returned home from Ukrainian captivity. On that day, the largest exchange of prisoners between Ukraine and Russia in six months took place: 248 Russians and 230 Ukrainians returned home.
Recognizing someone in the twilight footage was only possible if they were well-known. For Tamara Bessonova and Ilona Shakhova, peering into their faces was pointless. Sergei Lorsanov, Tamara's son and Ilona's ex-husband, had been buried eight months earlier in the village of Pyanda in the Arkhangelsk region. Although they had mourned their loved one, they hoped he was alive—as it happened, neither of them had seen Sergei's body before the burial. So when Bessonova's sister came running to her home with the message, "Look, it's Sergei in the video," it was a struggle for her to keep her wits about her.
"The military registration and enlistment office thinks I'm insane," Tamara says in a calm, tired voice. "But no, my mind's fine, but I've definitely lost my health."
A lost place
Tamara Bessonova speaks calmly, without tears, though her speech is not always smooth, as if her thoughts are muddled. She lives in Pyanda, is only 46 years old, and appears tired and exhausted. After she buried her 26-year-old son, who died somewhere near Makeyevka, on August 6, 2023, her life seemed to stand still. "I didn't want to live. I wanted to start the car and fly away," she says. For a long time after the funeral, Tamara didn't leave the house. Only in January did she return to work: "It's hard being home alone. At least at work I get some distraction."
The mother last saw her son in 2022, after he was imprisoned. However, she prefers not to talk about her son's criminal record in detail. According to court records, Sergey Lorsanov had two criminal convictions, both of which involved stealing from his stepfather. First, he sold a friend his circular saw, and while the friend was shopping, he used his phone and withdrew his entire wages. That time, he received a two-year suspended sentence. Just a year later, the same thing happened again. The stepson fraudulently obtained a 30 ruble loan using his stepfather's phone number and transferred the money to himself. This time, Lorsanov was sentenced to a real prison term—three and a half years.
"Sergey loved to drink, and when he drank, he was drawn to debauchery and spending," recalls Lorsanov's wife, Ilona.
A well-groomed, attractive 24-year-old woman lives in Vologda. Her makeup is polished and accentuates her beauty, with perfectly winged eyeliner and doll-like lips. But when she starts talking, she sounds like a determined woman who knows how to stand up for herself.
"Our family life didn't work out because Sergey led a bad lifestyle," Ilona says. "He didn't want to work, and we lived off his eldest daughter's allowance [from another marriage]. There was everything: drinking, fighting, he beat me, and stole everything from the house. In March 2019, I found out I was pregnant. We ended the relationship eight months into the pregnancy: Sergey drank himself into alcoholic epilepsy and ended up in a clinic."
Despite the breakup, Ilona hoped that Sergey would change after the baby was born. However, he didn't show up for the hospital discharge. Resentful, she decided the boy would have nothing in common with his father: she changed his middle name and gave him her last name. Sergey also vented his frustrations, telling friends that his ex-wife had "fooled" the child and, according to Ilona, "did everything" to keep her from communicating with his family. Despite everything, Ilona begged him to see their son—"the boy needs a man's upbringing"—and Sergey promised to be a good father and send him money. Ultimately, he saw his son only once, when he was two and a half years old.
Expecting financial assistance from Sergei was pointless—he wasn't really employed anywhere. The village of Pyanda, where Lorsanov lived, has a population of about 300, and the small village school barely has 20 students. There's one store, a first-aid post, and a sawmill. "It's a lost cause for young people," the locals say. "There's nothing for young people to do here. They try to leave for the city and stay there." "If you walk into any house in the village, everyone's drinking."
Most of them work at the sawmill in neighboring Bereznyaki, where they are transported by a company bus. Sergey's family, his mother and stepfather, also work there. Tamara is a stacker, stacking sawn lumber. The work is physically demanding, constantly outdoors—in rain and frost, six days a week—and the salary is 40 rubles. Not everyone is willing to take on such hard labor; people look for easier positions. Sergey never stayed in any one job for long.
"I have to fight, I'm a man - I have balls."
In April 2022, after stealing from his stepfather for the second time, Lorsanov was sent to a settlement in Velsk. He periodically called his mother, and in March 2023, he reported that prisoners were being recruited for Ukraine.
Tamara tried to talk her son out of it. She remembered the grief of a colleague whose son had died in the Wagner PMC. Sergei's sentence was ending in 2025; he had worked in prison and proven himself. The family hoped he would be released early with a less serious conviction. But in April, their son called from Ukraine.
"We asked him, 'Why did you go there? Don't you have anything better to do?' Seryozha had the same answer to everything: 'I have to, I'm a man—I have balls.' I don't know what was going on in his head," Bessonova recalls. She didn't approve of her son's decision, but she was still proud of his actions.
Ilona is also proud, even though she called Sergei a "fool" during their last conversation: "He didn't chicken out, he left. Yes, it was only on the front lines that he realized he'd made a mistake. But he didn't desert; he didn't run away."
Ilona didn't immediately learn that her ex-husband had gone to the front—they hadn't been in touch for a year and a half. So, when, at the end of May 2023, a tipsy Sergey called her from an unknown number and said he was in Ukraine, Ilona didn't believe him. She believed that there was no time for drinking during the war and alcohol was hard to come by.
Ilona has no doubt that Sergei signed the contract for the money. True, he had to beg his mother for it first. Tamara says that when her son was sent to the front lines, he received 84 rubles, which he used to buy a new uniform, a helmet, and a phone. And then he had to send money: "Two thousand for combat boots, then 15, then money for cigarettes, then more for food—he said they hadn't eaten for two days…"
The last conversation
"'How are you? How are you?' He apparently wanted to brag about joining the SVO," Ilona recalls their last conversation with Sergey. "He said he could die too: 'There are only five of us left out of 30.' He started repenting: he realized everything, he wanted to return to his family and raise his son. 'I'll earn some money, I'll come back, I'll do everything so you don't want for anything.'"
A heartfelt conversation didn't work out. Ilona cut off his further promises, saying she didn't need his money. Sergey, hearing his son's awakened cries, asked to speak with him. "Who is that?" the boy asked. "Tell your son who it is," Sergey begged. Offended, Ilona didn't say it was his father, calling him simply "Seryozha." She recalls: he "heard, burst into tears, and passed out."
The next reminder of Sergei came on August 6th. A friend forwarded a message about him in the Vinogradovsky district. said goodbye with Sergei Lorsanov, a native of Pyanda, who died on July 11. This news seemed to push past grievances aside.
"When I found out Sergei had died, it was like a blow to my head. I let go of all the internal pain I'd felt while waiting four years for him to return to his family. I couldn't eat or drink; I didn't leave the house for a week. I had suicidal thoughts, but I knew I had children. I blamed myself for giving in and failing to protect him from alcohol."
Now Sergey's account On VK, he's listed as a deceased person's page. His followings mostly include automotive-themed publics, comedy groups, and groups tagged "18+" and "for the guys." Before leaving for war, Lorsanov often posted selfies and his thoughts on life and relationships. Addressing an unseen interlocutor, he mused, "I can't stand people who choose someone over me one day, and then, when they have no one left, they come running back again... I don't want to be anyone's second choice." (spelling and punctuation preserved)In another post, he urged: "Be honest and fair. Love others and be forgiving. Respect your elders, value your mothers. And live by your conscience!"
A few weeks before his death, the contractor posted the songs "Mom, I'm Alive" and "Hang in there, Guys" on his page. The lyrics include, among other things: "With a trembling hand, the boy loads his machine gun / But the guys nearby will support him - Everything will be alright, bro."
Strange moments
Ilona suffered the death of her wayward husband alone; she had no contact with his mother by then. Meanwhile, Tamara Bessonova spent several weeks in a state of anxiety.
First, her son's pen pal contacted her and said the unit commander had reported Sergei's death. Tamara called the fellow soldier whose phone number her son had last used, and he confirmed the death. The Defense Ministry hotline responded: Lorsanov was neither listed as a service member nor among the dead—he had been declared missing. Three weeks later, the district military registration and enlistment office finally called Pyanda and reported the soldier's death. However, the date of death was different from the one previously published on social media: June 29.
"How can this be? We spoke to him on July 8th? He was sitting in the dugout with the guys, and we could hear voices," Sergei's mother recalls.
She remembers that call well. Her son confessed that "it was only here that I began to understand and appreciate life." He also said he suffered a severe concussion—he temporarily lost consciousness and vision, which only returned on the fourth day. Tamara filed a complaint with the unit commander, requesting a DNA test. His request was denied, as his fellow soldiers had witnessed Sergei's death.
Tamara didn't go to the identification, saying she couldn't bear it. Her sister and aunt, who had seen Sergei ten years ago, did. Ultimately, the head of the Vinogradovsky District, Alexander Pervukhin, signed for the death notice. He had never seen the boy and identified him from a photo. (The reason for this remains unclear; the family was unable to provide any further information; at one point, they declined to speak further with the journalist.) When the coffin arrived in Pyanda, the window in the zinc coffin was painted over, and the mother never saw the body for the last time.
In August, Tamara and Ilona rekindled their relationship, communicating for the first time in five years. "It's not my grandson's fault," says Tamara, referring to the disagreements between her daughter-in-law and her son. Now, Ilona admits, they call each other almost every day and can talk for hours. Exchanging memories of Sergei and comparing dates, the women came to the conclusion: perhaps they buried someone else.
Lorsanov's sister added to the doubt. After the funeral, she admitted, "Mom, I'm not sure it was Sergei. The body's head was small, like a baby's." Ilona says her husband was large, with a large head. Now she's worried she didn't attend the funeral ceremony—otherwise she would have verified whether Sergei was buried. A case from the neighboring village of Kholmogory further fueled the belief that Sergei is still alive: during one of their visits to the military registration and enlistment office, the family was told that a man from Sergei's unit had also been declared dead, his body buried, and two months later, he returned alive. This isn't an isolated incident. In Buryatia, for example, a "Wagnerite" soldier returned alive after his funeral. also returned to the village.
Even more suspicions were raised when someone logged into Lorsanov's VKontakte account in the fall.
"Sergey had a habit of changing his phone password every two days," Ilona says. "He was afraid someone would hack it. So the chances of anyone else using it were slim. When Sergey was concussed, he lost his documents and his phone. If he'd been lying on the ground, in the mud, in the rain, it's unlikely the phone would have been 'revived.'"
Tormented by doubts, the girl posted on VKontakte that she was looking for her husband, and indicated his signs.
The scammers may have responded to this post. In mid-December, Shakhova received a call from a Ukrainian number. They said her husband was supposedly in a Kyiv pretrial detention center and offered to pay a ransom of 20 rubles. Ilona reacted soberly to the information, demanding to know what tattoos Sergey had or to see him on video. After that, they stopped communicating with her. Apparently, the call had an impact on Ilona—before the New Year of 2023, she had a dream. "Why are you and Mom crying? I'm alive, just in captivity," Sergey said.
"Who did we bury?"
In the first days of January, in the chat of the wives of military personnel of unit 24314, where Sergei served, appeared lists of prisoners of war, who were scheduled for exchange. Ilona didn't find her husband's last name there and didn't follow the exchange on January 3rd. But when her mother-in-law sent a video on January 10th and asked her to watch it, she froze: the footage clearly showed Sergei.
"No two people are exactly alike," Shakhova is certain. "We know that Sergei injured his kneecap during training, and in the video, the young man also limps. The man in the video has the same behavior as Sergei. He also hid his face, pulled the collar of his hood down over his chin, and also hid his hands in his pockets. I immediately thought: who did we bury then?"
Ilona has photos of Sergey scattered around her home, and her children, a daughter and son, also recognized him in the video. Women in the chat, comparing the photo with the video footage, unanimously agreed: it was the same person.
The author of the article, which was distributed in Russian media, roller It was Shamsail Saraliev, a State Duma deputy who participated in the prisoner exchange. Ilona contacted his assistant. She said she had identified her husband among the returnees and was ready to pick him up. "All the prisoners of war have called home. Your husband is not here. This man has different documents," the assistant wrote.
"I explain to her that the prisoners at 'Storm Z' had all their documents confiscated before being sent to the front lines," recalls Ilona Shakhova. "Sergey's military ID and passport are in unit 24314 in the village of Persianovsky in the Rostov region. After the hospital, all he had was a certificate of severe concussion. I tell her: we're ready to provide DNA testing to either disprove or prove the relationship... It's useless."
Saraliev's assistant only revealed that the man Tamara and Ilona identified as Sergey was in a Moscow hospital. Lorsanov's family suspects he may have returned using false documents.
"Perhaps some documents were lying around and he picked them up, or maybe they were slipped to him," the ex-wife speculates. "He had a severe concussion, maybe he doesn't remember anything about himself. But I have no doubt that the guy in the video is Sergei."
His relatives attribute the fact that Sergei still hasn’t contacted them to a concussion.
Tamara Bessonova, trying to clarify the situation, contacted the district military registration and enlistment office. When she first went there and reported that her son might be alive, she felt she was deemed "insane." She received the same response to all her inquiries: "Wait." In January, the mother and daughter-in-law sent inquiries to the Ministry of Defense and the Investigative Committee, addressed to Bastrykin, and appealed to Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova for assistance. Speaking to a journalist two months later, Tamara said she had received no responses and refused further communication.
Ilona tried through social networks find people, who also unsuccessfully sought answers from the Ministry of Defense regarding the fallen soldiers. Two dozen women responded to her appeal. But no one wanted to openly sign the collective letter: "Everyone's afraid."
"Until I personally verify, there's still hope that he [the guy in the video] is mine," the mother insists. "I believe and don't believe it at the same time. I'm waiting for God to give me some kind of sign—whether my son is dead or alive. I'm talking to my son at his grave."
What will he be like when he returns from the war?
In 2022, Tamara Bessonova was "more or less calm" about the war. Her attitude changed when her family went to the front. Now she has a cousin from Grozny, a friend serving as a sniper, a nephew missing in action, and a classmate killed.
"That side is suffering too. They're losing fathers and husbands there too. But both countries are still to blame," Ilona muses. "One bombed its own, and the other came to defend the other side's territory. The two higher-ups, who couldn't agree on anything, should have come to an agreement, otherwise, in the end, it's ordinary people who suffer."
"I want this to end soon," Sergei's mother agrees. "Mothers and wives are waiting for their boys. They keep a lot of things quiet on TV. They don't talk about how many of our guys are dying or being captured in Ukraine. I think most of the guys are joining for the money—one wanted to buy a car, another needed an apartment. But on social media, they often write that many aren't getting paid for their injuries or their deaths."
Ilona says that in Pyanda, everyone believes the family was paid six million rubles for Sergei's death; everyone was eager to ask about it. But the family never received any money.
As soon as they received news of Sergei's death, his family began inquiring whether he had been paid for his contract service and whether the family was entitled to compensation for his death. It turned out that his salary, compensation, combat allowance, and per diem were transferred on August 29th. But the family has been unable to access this money. Accessing the account requires accepting an inheritance. The family is hesitant, as that would mean having to pay off Sergei's debts.
There are 14 entries under the name Lorsanov in the bailiffs' database, with debts totaling almost 157 rubles. Ilona is still repaying the loan her ex-husband took out using her passport in 2019. Meanwhile, it turns out that a third party, in addition to the bank and Sergey himself, has access to the bank card. The bank did not disclose who exactly. Citing her ex-husband's account, Ilona claims the commander allegedly extorted half a million rubles from him, promising to let him go home. It's possible the account is simply empty.
Now, understanding the complexities of the situation, she is nonetheless applying for a survivor's pension. Ilona resolved the issue of her son being registered under a different patronymic and mother's last name by taking a DNA test. She took it after her relationship with her husband's family improved, partly because she wanted to prove Sergei's paternity and put an end to any speculation.
If the Investigative Committee provides the family with information about the soldier featured in the video, they intend to call off the search. If there is no response, the family is determined to have the body exhumed.
"We'll do the DNA ourselves and figure out who's there. We're not giving up the body, though. If it turns out it's not one of our soldiers, let the Ministry of Defense look for his relatives," Ilona says decisively. But she can't figure out what to do if her husband does turn out to be alive. After all, she'd have to repay the state for the benefits he'd paid. However, that's not what worries her more than what kind of Sergei he might be when he returns.
Ilona tells what she knows about her friends. How, after the "SVO," they constantly glance at the sky, wary of the "birdie"—the drone. They don't let anyone approach them from behind—and it's good if they notice, otherwise they'll use a tactic. One man who returned from the war was watching the movie "Terminator," and during the scene where the cyborg peels skin off his hand, he started peeling skin off his hands, saying, "You think I can't do that?" Friends were with him, they called an ambulance, and the former soldier was taken to the clinic.
"After this situation, I don't think he'll ever have a normal life. What's going on in his head? He can't even drink like he used to. It'll be scary to leave our child with him," Ilona muses.
While awaiting a response from the Investigative Committee, the family is in no rush to exhume the body. "The main thing for us is to understand who we buried, and whether we made a mistake or not. We can't bear to live in this state."