The remains of 30 Red Army soldiers, discovered by Belarusian and Russian search teams, have been reburied in the agro-town of Kopti, Vitebsk region.

Field search operations were conducted from May 10 to May 19 by servicemen of the 52nd Separate Specialized Battalion in conjunction with the Moscow Regional Public Patriotic Organization "Zapadny Rubezh" (Western Frontier). A total of 30 soldiers' remains were found, with the names of 19 of them identified. This is a rare occurrence for such a significant search result. "Last year, the remains of 468 people were exhumed. These included soldiers and officers of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, as well as civilians. And we only knew the names of two of those who were laid to rest in 2021. Today's memorial ceremony is particularly significant for us as it takes place on the eve of the All-People's Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Great Patriotic War. We will soon mark another anniversary of the start of Operation Bagration – the date from which the liberation of both the Vitebsk region and all of Belarus began. Here are people who have been engaged in difficult search work for decades. Thank you to those who, day after day, year after year, continue this sacred and very important work for all of us," said Vladimir Terentyev, Chairman of the Vitebsk Regional Council of Deputies, who attended the reburial ceremony.

Among the Red Army soldiers who have found their final resting place at the military burial site today were 19 soldiers of the separate ski battalion of the 274th Rifle Division. The unit perished on December 31, 1943. It participated in an offensive operation near the villages of Lobany and Zaziby. It was their names that became known to the search teams after studying the archives. "During the war years, the names of the settlements were recorded incorrectly, and at first, we started searching in the wrong place. Later, thanks to a relative of one of the fallen soldiers, the correct location was established. The soldiers were found at different depths in the mass grave. Most likely, it was a crater from an explosion, which caused the deaths of the Red Army soldiers," Anatoly Burdo, Chairman of the Vitebsk Youth Public Association "Military-Patriotic Club 'Poisk'" (Search), told a BELTA correspondent.

To honour the memory of the fallen relative, Sergeant Vasily Isaev, his nephew, retired Police Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Popov, travelled from Moscow. He explained that at his mother's request, he had been searching for information about her brother since 2009. He discovered that an error had crept into the documents, and the names of the villages had been confused, which is why the search parties had not found the remains of the Red Army soldiers on the first attempt. A map fragment, which indicated these specific villages, proved helpful. It was overlaid onto modern geodata, and the location of the common burial site of the ski battalion was identified. "It was only discovered in the autumn of last year. My uncle was buried here. Before that, I searched for information about him in the archives of the Ministry of Defence and in open sources. Then I met local search teams who exhumed the remains of all the soldiers of the battalion and other Red Army warriors. Unfortunately, my mother could not come as she is already 84 years old, and I arrived to honour my uncle's memory," shared the guest from Moscow.

Source: vitebsk-region.gov.by