"My mother remarried some years later and everyone told me to call my stepfather Daddy. In just less than three months, the coming German troops were able to encircle the whole city while starting to attack it through air. They are still lying where they fell. My mum was so hungry all the time, she begged the other kids for pieces of bread at school, she adds. But while personal items can build up a picture of the person, they can't help find his name, or place of birth. Report rulebreaking comments for moderator review. Our country allowed volunteers to participate in hostilities for the first time, Sergei Fomchenko, a military commander who fought in Ukraine in 2014 and set up the high-profile BARS 13 unit earlier this year, a law recognizing volunteers as war veterans mandating generous pensions and. If the years-old ID tag is not decipherable on site, it is packed carefully and is sent to the teams headquarters located in the Volga city of Kazan. 898K views 7 years ago VICE International S1 E23 In World War 2 thousands of soldiers were killed on the border of Germany and Russia. However, many aspects of a volunteers legal status are unclear. "The more data we can collect from the spot, the better the chance we have to identify a soldier," says Alexander Konoplov, the leader of the Exploration group. We [just] wanted to go and join our guys.. They destroyed the church and even struck police officers who tried to control the enraged mob. Once enlisted, volunteer soldiers have been used both to reinforce regular units and grouped into new formations. Being unknown is nothing to be proud of. Olga and Marina are working near the town of Lyuban, 80km (50 miles) south of St Petersburg. Here you have a head - there a leg" She pauses and stares into the fire. The grave appeared to be hastily prepared by the Russian soldiers, villagers or even the German troops in a move to prevent an epidemic from occurring with the dead just thrown in unceremoniously. Next Post: Winter Arctic Cruise of USS Skate (SSN-578), 1959. The diggers hold a different belief for them, some of the countrys WWII battle fronts were purposely hidden. He hopes that it is an improvised ID tag. Listen to Lucy Ash's report on the Russians Digging up the dead on the BBC iPlayer. I was shocked. 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. 9.8K subscribers in the russiawarinukraine community. , - Sony FDR-AX100E- Sony HDR-PJ650E-Action Cam Sony FDR-X3000R -GoPro Hero 7 Tesoro TejonGarret AT ProGarret Pro pointerGolden Mask Deep Hunter Pro 2 , , , , , , , , , , , excavation, WOT, , treasure, , gagarin, , wot, world of tanks, , , , , , , , , , , 2017, , , , , , , , , ww2, dig We are the ones who made him unknown, declares Ilya. Near River Neva's banks and close to the mass grave the diggers found, a Russian Orthodox priest says prayers while walking around the bright red coffins placed on the grass as the relatives -children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of the identified soldiers the diggers have unearthed - watched, some openly shedding their tears. "The soldier had a family, he had children, he fell in love," says Ilya. Every new search gets to me as if it was the first one, says Rafik. This work connects us to our past. A mobilized soldier doesnt know his comrades when he goes to the front.. These teams are known as the "white diggers", but there are also those dubbed "black diggers" who search for medals, guns, coins or even gold teeth which they sell online or to specialist dealers. It was 1983, I was 40km from Leningrad and there lay the remains of a soldier who hadn't been buried. Soviet Naval Dagger W/Sheath In Box. The diggers would like each soldier to have his own, but they can't afford the extra 1,500 they would need for today's service. 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 Russia's so-called Special Combat Army Reserve. Nevskaya Dubrovka, located on the banks of the River Neva, had been the setting of one of the bloodiest chapters of the Leningrad campaign. Many countries were scarred by World War Two, but none suffered as many losses as the Soviet Union. Local. The series follows two metal-detecting enthusiasts, a Polish relic hunter and an American military antiques dealer as they excavate battlegrounds across Eastern Europe. Thunberg was held while protesting at the opencast coal mine of Garzweiler 2, some 9 km (5.6 miles) from the village of . Local. There will definitely be work for our grandchildren, says Marina. | Medieval Compilation. She recently unearthed a helmet and in order to find its owner, the team had to uproot two nearby trees. to eastern Ukraine in August in an attempt to stop successful advances by the Ukrainian army. "I was crossing a swamp when suddenly I saw some boots sticking out of the mud," he says. Russian War Diggers : The Germans Hurriedly threw their Equipment in the River WW2 Relic Hunters Here is a video from the Russian War Diggers where the Germans Hurriedly threw their Equipment in the River 1952: Britains BICYCLE Industry NewsReel, 1993: Make your own THUNDERBIRDS TRACY ISLAND | Blue Peter, 1989: PHILOSOPHY of the TUBE Workers | 40 Minutes | World of Work, 1989: LEONARD NIMOY on Spock and STAR TREK | Wogan | Classic Celebrity Interviews | BBC Archive, 1973: INVISIBLE Fighting FISH Do You See Them? They all operate under the umbrella of the Defense Ministry and have command structures integrated into the Armed Forces. "Sometimes you need to know that you are doing something which is important, that you are not just a piece of dust in this universe. Ukraine's capital came under one of the biggest attacks of the war as Russia's invading forces fired dozens of missiles across the country. Finding the dead is not the sole mission of the diggers. The twins' elderly mother was stunned when she heard his name - Alexander Golik - the family had searched in vain for years. , , . . . 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 . A bit further away, I found a Soviet helmet. The Red Army fought tooth and nail to secure a narrow stretch of river bank in an attempt to break the blockade. Transcript He said he didnt know who his contractor was. Near River Nevas banks and close to the mass grave the diggers found, a Russian Orthodox priest says prayers while walking around the bright red coffins placed on the grass as the relatives -children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of the identified soldiers the diggers have unearthed watched, some openly shedding their tears. She didn't get a penny and she had four children to raise," says Lyudmila. Alexander was quickly deployed to the frontlines in Ukraine after he joined a Russian unit for volunteer soldiers in October because he wanted to "defend his motherland." . Please select the Tab Content in the Widget Settings. But tracing a soldier's family can take years - on occasions more than a decade - especially if the family moved after the war. Ancient Wars. Finding the dead is only one part of their mission. However, the attempts to get the city by storm proved unsuccessful so Hitler opted for another tactic starving it. "Let's try to enhance purple colours on this yellow paper," he says. Here are 10 things not to do when dating a Russian woman learned the hard way: Do not ignore her. Please select the Tab Content in the Widget Settings. 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. Check - Russian war diggers YouTube statistics and Real-Time subscriber count. 3 June 2009 (110) Last Australian digger and the last veteran of any status to serve Australia in the conflict. A number of volunteer fighters have described problems or delays with payments and other benefits and some said they did not know with whom they had signed contracts. The workers had endured far worse horrors, he says. WWII - YouTube 0:00 / 45:04 Digging up Russia 's missing army. One month later, he was badly injured by artillery fire near the Ukrainian village of Makiivka amid intense fighting in the east of the country. Many of the relatives are now elderly and may not be in good health. She only remembers the shape of her fathers hands but she had memories of a kind, good man, Tatiana also comments. "They are not buried very deep," she says. 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Discover daily channel statistics, earnings, subscriber attribute, relevant YouTubers and videos. He was one of the soldiers buried in the mass grave as the diggers found his ID tag in the location. But attempts to take the city by storm fell through, so Hitler decided to starve it into surrender. These teams, who look for the soldiers bones, are called white diggers differentiating them from the black diggers those who dig through and search for metals, guns, coins and even gold teeth which they then sell to specialist dealers or online but leave the bones on the ground. We do battlefield archeology only around Volgograd, at such places as the airfield Pitomnik and Gumrak, Gorodische district, Ezhovka, Peskovatka, Vertachiy, Orlovka, Rossoshka villages etc. Russia's Lost Princesses - Documentary Series (2014) Walking Through History - Documentary Series (2013) Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire - Documentary Series (2006) Royal Secrets - Documentary Series ( 1996 ) Military History Naval History Battlefield Mysteries Military Museums Military Generals Roman Military Wars War Documentaries Nevskaya Dubrovka, on the banks of the River Neva, was the scene of one of the bloodiest campaigns of the Leningrad siege. Sadly, the papers are often illegible. She will speak her mind, she will voice her opinions. The diggers are exposed to horrors, too, as they seek to discover the remains and names of these WWII fallen soldiers. Horror A couple hires a professional digger (underground structure explorer) to help them find their friends, who mysteriously disappeared in the subway. When even money and patriotism are insufficient to inspire Russians to sign up to fight in Ukraine, its time to bring out the big guns such as food ISTANBUL Alexander, 23, remembers panic-buying a ticket from St. Petersburg to this Turkish metropolis shortly after Russia launched its invasion Russian volunteers and mobilized men preparing to leave for training. She even says that there are times she feels her job as a journalist is pointless, a different feeling she gets from when she is in the forest digging bodies out where she feels she is doing a very important task. So many Red Army units were killed, wiped out or surrounded - how could anyone think about burials, let alone records of burials, in such conditions?". "If you take a map showing where battles took place, then see where all the new forest plantations and building projects were located, you'll find they coincide with the front line. In this location, measuring just a mere 10 square kilometers, about 19,000 soldiers were killed in a span of days in 1942. "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. Russia's defense ministry said in a statement that as a result of the negotiation process, 50 Russian soldiers captured . The team's technician, Rafik Salakhiev, uses ultraviolet light and digital imaging to reveal the faded pencil marks. The soldiers may have been thrown into the pit by their comrades or local villagers as a hasty form of burial, or even by the German Army, anxious to prevent an epidemic among its troops. 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