As what the leader of the Exploration group, Alexander Konoplov,puts in: The more data we can collect from the spot, the better the chance we have to identify a soldier.. Russian War Diggers : We found a German Dugout. Images courtesy of Dean Arnett, Lucy Ash, Olga Ivshina and Maxim Lomakin. We are the ones who made him unknown, declares Ilya. Alexander was shortly deployed to the frontlines in Ukraine after he joined a Russian unit for volunteer troopers in October as a result of he wished to "defend his motherland." One month later, he was badly injured by artillery hearth close to the Ukrainian village of Makiivka amid intense preventing within the east of the nation. If you crouch down in the woods near Lyuban, a series of grooves in the earth can be clearly made out. They are not interested in identifying the soldiers - they just leave the bones in the ground. The less information there is. On the battlefield in Ukraine, volunteers fight alongside regular soldiers, men drafted during the Kremlins partial mobilization announced in September and Wagner Group mercenaries. But the skeletons were all mixed up and smashed. Russian Dagger Belt Suspensions Dirk Soviet Union USSR EX. WORLD WAR 2 relics were found in their droves following a dig by four keen historians who exposed a German bunker in the middle of a field after 70 years. Many of their bodies were never found. I can't tell you how grateful I am.". Many are believed to come from small towns and rural areas with higher poverty rates and fewer job opportunities. "We can reduce the saturation and yes! Russian war diggers (Youtube) Firstly, apologies if this has already been the subject of discussion elsewhere. They are still lying where they fell. Then we found a pelvis and some ribs between the roots. The remains are decomposing and it is getting harder to find the bones, ID tags and army kit." My heart pulls me to do this work, she says. "From reading over masses of personal and official records in Australia and the US, and seeing the paths men take, the lives they lived and the loves they pursued - the fluidity of sexuality, especially in war, becomes really clear," Smaal says. Hope we see you again! Many of these men apparently believe the Kremlins messaging that Moscow is battling Nazis who control Kyiv and are waging a genocidal campaign against Russian-speakers. When her friends in Moscow complain about not being able to afford a good enough car or designer clothes, she feels alienated. under the umbrella of the Defense Ministry and have command structures integrated into the Armed Forces. And even more so, theydve been turned into swiss cheese while . Exploration is one of 600 groups of diggers from all over Russia who have found and reburied a total of 500,000 soldiers so far. They knew that he hadn't just deserted, that he couldn't have behaved like that, but there was never any proof until 60 years later.". But the key is usually an ID tag. Joining BARS is one way to join the fight if you dont fit the Defense Ministrys criteria for enlistment, three volunteer soldiers told The Moscow Times. During business in the House, Thursday, Matero . The question is, how could the workers go through and plough through a land with a tractor when they could visibly see it littered with the bodies of the dead, unburied soldiers? | Nationwide | Weird and Wonderful | BBC Archive. 20th Century Battlefields Documentary Series (2007), Al Murray's Road to Berlin Documentary Series (2004), America : The Story of the US Documentary Series (2010), Andrew Marr's History of the World Documentary Series (2012), Apocalypse: Stalin Documentary Series (2018), Apocalypse: The Rise of Hitler Documentary Series (2013), Battle Stations Documentary Series (2000), Battlefield : Vietnam Documentary Series (1999), Britain's Biggest Warship Documentary Series (2018), Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty Documentary Series (2014), Britain's Bloody Crown Documentary Series (2016), Churchill's Bodyguard Documentary Series (2005), Crusade in the Pacific : World War 2 Documentary Series (1951), Liberty, The American Revolution Documentary Series (1997), Pacific : The Lost Evidence Documentary Series (2005), Russia's Lost Princesses Documentary Series (2014), The Big Picture Documentary Series (1964), The Complete History of the Second World War Documentary Series, The Conquerors Documentary Series (2005), The Hitler Chronicles Documentary Series (2018), The Inca: Masters of the Clouds Documentary Series, The Lost Evidence Documentary Series (2004), The Pacific War in Color (2018) Documentary Series, The Road to War Documentary Series (1989), The Unknown War Documentary Series (1978), Tony Robinson's History of Britain Documentary Series (2020), Wings of the Luftwaffe Documentary Series ( 1992), World War 1 in Colour Documentary Series (2003), World War II in Colour Documentary Series (2009). They had managed to restore historical truth and honour their fathers memory. You are no longer the same person you were before.. It does matter who has done it. Its just a part of a propaganda campaign, he said. Near a naked flame its still dangerous, even though it has been lying in the ground for 70 years, she pointed out. They are also often eligible for one-off sign-on. Unable to trace his family, the group had issued an appeal which aired on the evening news. Russian forces shelled the recently liberated Kherson region more than 60 times on Thursday, according to the head of the region's military administration, Yaroslav Yanushevych. Here you have a head there a leg She pauses and gazes at the fire. Some were also left blank since soldiers had this superstitious belief that filling them would somehow lead to certain death. $450.00. Nazi War Diggers, which was also pulled from its schedule by Foxtel in Australia in 2015, consists of four one-hour episodes during which the excavation team traces, exposes, and recovers the remains of Russian and German soldiers killed in action. The walls of the large, newly dug grave are draped with red cloth - an act of respect normally accorded only to army generals. Sometimes they find old coins with the soldiers, given to them by their families. The most experienced digger has been in this business for almost 30 years already. 2023 BBC. Joined in early 1918 as wireless operator, but did not see action. They are persistent to continue until every fallen man has been found though that could take a lifetime of work. According to her, her mother had remarried a few years after her father was declared missing in action and everyone insisted she call her stepfather daddy but she refused as she had an inkling who her real daddy was. Olga Ivshina is one of those who signed up for this task. During World War Two, Soviet soldiers' ID tags were not made of metal - they were small ebony capsules containing a small piece of paper for their personal details. The most essential key in this is the ID tag. Alexander has a strict set of guidelines about how the remains should be excavated, labelled and stored. But discovering who they were is not always easy, especially after so much time has passed. But when he turns it upside down in his hand, what comes out of it is not a roll of paper, but a trickle of brown liquid. He instructed The Moscow Occasions from his hospital . With four children to raise, times went tough for the widowed woman. Digging up Russia 's missing army. Here are 10 things not to do when dating a Russian woman learned the hard way: Do not ignore her. I am not surprised that Peter Schumann and the Bread and Puppet Theater cannot bring themselves to blame the obscene genocidal Russian attempt to destroy Ukraine as a nation . Yet as machine guns roared overhead at troops unable to advance over no man's land, the only remaining way to undermine the enemy was by digging extensive tunnels beneath their trenches - and filling them with explosives. We are the ones who made him unknown.". Russia was one, if not the country with the most casualties during WWII. Countless of the Russian troops, used as mere cannon fodders, were killed within the area. "Every new search gets to me as if it was the first one," says Rafik. . Transcript | Medieval Compilation. Others were left blank because many soldiers were superstitious - they believed filling in the forms would lead to certain death. Lined young men dressed in Soviet-styled army uniforms acted as the guard of honor for the event. 1. Why does the US have 800 Military Bases around the World? After that there were more and more and more, and we realized these bodies were to be found everywhere and on a massive scale.. "A bit further away, I found a Soviet helmet. Report rulebreaking comments for moderator review. "Some wrote, 'If I am killed, please pass this on to my girlfriend or my mum.' "The fact that he was missing in action meant that my grandmother was not entitled to any of the financial support given to other relatives after the Great Patriotic War. The diggers hold a different belief for them, some of the countrys WWII battle fronts were purposely hidden. He said he didnt know who his contractor was. There are no official figures for the numbers of Russian volunteers currently in Ukraine, but they include tens of thousands of men fighting in regional battalions raised by local authorities and given names like Tiger, units of Cossacks and Russias so-called Special Combat Army Reserve. As most of these relatives are old and not in the very best of health conditions, the group tries to prepare them and break the news gently to them though they have been waiting for this break from their loved one for a long time. Based on the information they gathered from the archives, the diggers found out Kustov was one of Stalins commanders tasked in leading his well-knownshtrafbats,a unit made up of deserters and prisoners. All iron similar to. Recently, she was able to unearth a helmet and in order for them to find its wearer, the team had to pull out two trees nearby. The diggers found their grandfather's ID tag in the mass grave. Please select the Tab Content in the Widget Settings. Every spring, summer and autumn I get this strange sort of yearning inside me to go and look for the soldiers. The soldiers are waiting for us waiting for the chance to finally go home.. Tracing a soldiers family can also take years, even decades, to do especially if the said family has moved elsewhere after WWII. From the archives, the diggers worked out that Kustov had been the commander of one of Stalin's notorious shtrafbats, a battalion made up of prisoners and deserters. Here is another Relics find from the Russian War Diggers. "Black Diggers" Dig Up, Repair, and Sell WWII Weapons Featured 02/09/2012 Groups in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus operate around areas where firece battles were fought in WWII digging up and selling long ago dropped weapons. The ceremony acted as the culmination of the diggers months of hard work. SPEAKER of the National Assembly Nelly Mutti has directed Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Relations Stanley Kakubo to issue a ministerial statement to the House next week on the on-going war between Ukraine and Russia and state Zambia's position on the same. There are times they find old coins with the soldiers remains given by their families. 20th Century Battlefields Documentary Series (2007), Al Murray's Road to Berlin Documentary Series (2004), America : The Story of the US Documentary Series (2010), Andrew Marr's History of the World Documentary Series (2012), Apocalypse: Stalin Documentary Series (2018), Apocalypse: The Rise of Hitler Documentary Series (2013), Battle Stations Documentary Series (2000), Battlefield : Vietnam Documentary Series (1999), Britain's Biggest Warship Documentary Series (2018), Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty Documentary Series (2014), Britain's Bloody Crown Documentary Series (2016), Churchill's Bodyguard Documentary Series (2005), Crusade in the Pacific : World War 2 Documentary Series (1951), Liberty, The American Revolution Documentary Series (1997), Pacific : The Lost Evidence Documentary Series (2005), Russia's Lost Princesses Documentary Series (2014), The Big Picture Documentary Series (1964), The Complete History of the Second World War Documentary Series, The Conquerors Documentary Series (2005), The Hitler Chronicles Documentary Series (2018), The Inca: Masters of the Clouds Documentary Series, The Lost Evidence Documentary Series (2004), The Pacific War in Color (2018) Documentary Series, The Road to War Documentary Series (1989), The Unknown War Documentary Series (1978), Tony Robinson's History of Britain Documentary Series (2020), Wings of the Luftwaffe Documentary Series ( 1992), World War 1 in Colour Documentary Series (2003), World War II in Colour Documentary Series (2009). "Near a naked flame it's still dangerous, even though it has been lying in the ground for 70 years," she says. Tweet. An eternal flame may burn at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow but for these volunteers, the best means to honor those who have fallen during WWII is to give them back their identities. "If they refused to plough a field because there were corpses or bones in it, they'd just be sacked," says Ilya. Visibly moved, as coffin after coffin is carried past to be buried, some of them look up to the sky. Alexander, who ran his own business selling food products before becoming a full-time digger, is holding a bullet case plugged with a small piece of wood. This is the culmination of months of work by the volunteers. Nazi War Diggers was cancelled by the National Geographic channel in 2014, and by Foxtel in Australia this year, after archaeologists slammed its gruesome content. 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For Olga - who sang hymns to Communism in her primary school, then learnt about profit and loss at secondary school - volunteering as a digger also provides a moral compass in confusing times. "But nature is working against us. 3 June 2009 (110) Last Australian digger and the last veteran of any status to serve Australia in the conflict. As Lyudmila supplies, because her grandfather was missing in action, her grandmother did not hold the right to any financial support given to other relatives of soldiers who served in the Great patriotic War. 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That's what life was like in the Soviet Union." The team's technician, Rafik Salakhiev, uses ultraviolet light and digital imaging to reveal the faded pencil marks. This work connects us to our past. Marina and Olga are just two of the many volunteers of the Exploration group who journeyed 12 hours via an army truck just to get to the forest located near St. Petersburg. "My mother remarried some years later and everyone told me to call my stepfather Daddy. Two civilians. Listen to Lucy Ash's report on the Russians Digging up the dead on the BBC iPlayer. The most experienced member of the Exploration team, Ilya Prokoviev, carfully pokes the ground with the use of a long spike made of metal. General Assault Badge Medal bars 1939 Iron Cross 1st Class SS Porzellanmanufaktur Allach 1939 Iron Cross 2nd Class Helmets Tank Assault Badge 1914 Iron Cross 1st Class What is it worth? We are engaged in the search and burial lost Red Army soldiers/ If we can to know their names, we looking for relatives and bury them on their native land with all. However, the attempts to get the city by storm proved unsuccessful so Hitler opted for another tactic starving it. Conditions are basic - they camp in the woods - and some days they have to wade waist-deep through mud to find the bodies of the fallen. Heziel Pitogo is one of the authors writing for WAR HISTORY ONLINE. Sure, there are lots of girls who look for rich guys just to get some money out of them. A Day in the Life of a Medieval Barber aka Budget Surgeon!? As much as the diggers would have wanted for each soldier to have his own coffin, the extra 1,500 they would have needed for that days service kept them back they simply do not have the means to provide that. Russia Military claim they have Captured the Town of Soledar Ukraine's Donbass Defense System Collapsing Ukraine Russia Latest w/ Col Doug Macgregor Ukraine. They all operate under the umbrella of the Defense Ministry and have command structures integrated into the Armed Forces. Exploration is one of 600 groups of diggers from all over Russia who have found and reburied a total of 500,000 soldiers so far. We didn't care about money or documents, one volunteer soldier who requested anonymity to speak freely told The Moscow Times. But when he turned it upside down in his hand, a trickle of brown liquid came out instead of a roll of paper leaving him a little disappointed. "They actively planted new trees on the battlefield - they ploughed furrows and put the trees exactly in the places where the unburied soldiers were lying," Marina says. On 22 June 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the largest and bloodiest campaign in military history, aimed at annexing vast areas of the USSR to the Third Reich. His disappearance had left his wife and children destitute. Nevskaya Dubrovka, located on the banks of the River Neva, had been the setting of one of the bloodiest chapters of the Leningrad campaign. Russian War Diggers : We found a huge Pit with Soldiers & German things from WW2 Relics Find Here is another Relics find from the Russian War Diggers Skip to content But here, on the dig, I feel we are doing something which is needed.". These unknown soldiers are what these volunteer body hunters are looking for. The governing council of the USSR issued decrees in 1963 about destroying any traces of war. The Observers - India: Mob attacks church in a wave of anti-Christian violence. However, that explanation is not enough as to why the battlefields were not cleared and the dead no identified and given at least proper burials. 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Olga Ivshina walks slowly and carefully through the pine trees, the beeps of her metal detector punctuating the quiet of the forest. A un-biased source of news, analysis, discussion and investigative journalism of Russia's war When we cleaned away some clumps of earth from the roots we saw two hands tangled up in them. "They had managed to restore historical truth and honour their father's memory," says Ilya. Some men also told The Moscow Times that they joined volunteer battalions because it gave them greater choice over their commanders and fellow soldiers. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Reportedly, there have been other diggers from different groups who have lost their lives while in volunteering mission elsewhere in Russia. The children, grand-children and great-grand-children of the soldiers they unearthed look on, some quietly sobbing. last summer, the diggers were able to dig out a mass grave. I cant tell you how grateful I am, she emotionally says as her eyes fill with tears. , units of Cossacks and Russias so-called Special Combat Army Reserve. Sergei Krivenko, the head of Citizen, Army & the Law, an NGO providing legal assistance to Russian soldiers, confirmed that BARS fighters often lacked proper contracts although he said he did not know whether this was intentional or merely the result of incompetence. There are more than 100 coffins - each contains the bones of 12 to 15 men. The Red Army fought tooth and nail to secure a narrow stretch of river bank in an attempt to break the blockade. The relics we found were Startling! 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