As death toll reaches record high, new names are added to war memorial in Pechenga
More than 100,000 Russian warriors might have been killed in Ukraine over the past half year. Among them is a major from the Northern Fleet's drone regiment.
According to the U.S State Department, Russia has lost 100,000 soldiers in Ukraine since January this year.
"It’s important to note that since January of this year, […], on the Russian side, they’ve lost 100,000 soldiers – dead – not injured – dead," said Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a press briefing on July 10.
Also the Ukrainian Defence Ministry estimates over 95,000 fatalities and tens of thousands wounded since January, United24Media reports.
The death toll is believed to be the highest since Moscow launched its full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022.
The number of killed soldiers is mounting also among forces from the Kola Peninsula. In Pechenga, the military town located near the border to Norway and Finland, an organisation that supports Russian soldiers and their relatives recently held an event at a local memorial site.
In the ceremony, more trees were planted. Each of the trees symbolises a killed soldier from the Northern Fleet.
"These trees are symbols of gratitude, respect and eternal love towards the ones that sacrificed their lives for our peaceful sky," the organisers said.
The so-called ‘memorial garden’ in Pechenga was established in 2023. Next to the site is a cemetery that holds about 12,000 of the German and Austrian men killed in Hitler’s attempt to conquer Murmansk in the period 1941-1944. Back at that time, Pechenga was called Parkkina and belonged to Finland.
According to the organisers, a total of 250 pine trees were planted in the ‘memorial garden’ in the summer of 2023. All of them were marked with the name of a killed soldier.
It is not clear how many trees were added in this year's expansion of the site. But the number of killed soldiers from the local 61st Naval Infantry Brigade and the 200th Motorised Rifle Brigade is likely to be in the thousands.
The event was attended by relatives of killed soldiers, as well as representatives of the two brigades.
Among the soldiers that recently have been reported killed in Ukraine is Dmitry Nikolaevich Ligasov, a major in the Northern Fleet's UAV regiment.
A news report from 2018 describes Ligasov as part of the information department at unit 72120. According to the report, the major met with school children to tell about Russian military drones.
Unit 72120 is based in Safonovo-1, the military base near airfield Severomorsk-2. Judging from a Russian military social media post, the unit specializes on drones.
Ligasov was born in 1979. Little is known about the circumstances of his death.
