The reburial of the remains of soldiers and civilians killed during the Great Patriotic War will take place in the Vitebsk district, a BELTA correspondent was informed at the Vitebsk District Executive Committee.
A mourning ceremony with the participation of representatives of local authorities, public organizations, searchers, servicemen, and local residents will be held on October 25 at the military burial site in the agro-town of Zaronovo.
In May and August of this year, servicemen of the 52nd Separate Specialized Battalion, together with members of the Moscow Regional Public Organization "Charitable Military-Historical Search Club 'Memory and Reconciliation'," conducted field search operations in the vicinity of this settlement and the village of Poloyniki. Participants of the patriotic event worked in the Vitebsk district for the second year in a row, choosing excavation sites based on studied archival data and information from local elders. In 2018, they discovered the remains of 137 Red Army soldiers (also reburied in Zaronovo), and this year – 144 Red Army soldiers and 10 civilians.
The names of some of them have been identified. Private Nikolai Ivanovich Lebedev, born in 1925, was identified by the medal "For Courage" found near Zaronovo. A native of the Moscow region, he was considered missing in action in December 1943. His great-nephew has been invited to the reburial ceremony, to whom the found award will be solemnly presented. Thanks to another discovered medal "For Military Merit," it was possible to identify another soldier who died in these places – Junior Sergeant Alexey Nikolaevich Kopysov (Kopossov), born in 1907, who died on January 3, 1944.