Konstantin Dobrovolski was out in the woods like he was most days in early autumn before the inevitable advance of arctic winter.
Armed with little more than a map, a shovel and an old metal detector, Dobrovolski has scoured the hostile landscape of Russia’s far north for the last 33 years in search of the long-forgotten remains of Soviet second world war soldiers.
“Just today we found the remains of five soldiers, some bones and old medals,” he said, speaking to the Guardian during a research trip outside the Arctic town of Murmansk. “We have to hurry before the ground freezes again.”
Together with a small team of committed volunteers, Dobrovolski, 70, has dedicated his life to finding, identifying and reburying the remains of more than 100,000 Soviet troops who are believed to have died on the very northern part of the Soviet defence line.
“When we started our work in the early 80s, there were more bodies than mushrooms. We have found the remains of 20,000 soldiers,” Dobrovolski said.
But these days, death is on his mind more than ever.
“Every day I am confronted with the grim consequences of war. But it seems like our nation didn’t learn the right lesson from history,” he said as the conversation quickly turned to the war in Ukraine.
The Soviet victory over Nazi Germany has gradually become the centrepiece of President Putin’s concept of Russian identity over his two decades in charge. Almost every family had some connection to the war, in which the Soviet sacrifice was unimaginably huge.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin tapped into the memory, language and imagery of the past war to justify the attack, telling his nation that men were “fighting for the same thing as their fathers and grandfathers” and framing Ukraine as a successor to Nazi Germany.
“Absolute nonsense,” said Dobrovolski when asked about the parallel between the two conflicts. “These two wars are completely different. Our fathers and grandfathers were heroically defending our country, not invading another one.”
“Our borders were drawn in 1991. What the hell are we doing in Ukraine? It’s madness and it needs to stop.”
Soon after the invasion began last year, a hashtag slogan popped up on the streets of Moscow to boost support for the war in Ukraine: “We don’t leave ours behind.”
“I look around and see all these bodies and then see these pseudo-patriots screaming that no one is left behind. They should spend a day with me here in the field and look at these forgotten soldiers,” Dobrovolski said. “How can they talk about patriotism when we haven’t even buried our defenders properly?”
Dobrovolski said he was shocked but not entirely surprised by the apparent support that the invasion had enjoyed among his countrymen. “We were being fed for a while that war and death is a noble, beautiful thing. There is a lot of hate in society,” he said.
For years, he grudgingly watched how the Kremlin transformed the Victory Day celebrations on 9 May into a bombastic show of modern military might. Pointing to the sinister slogan “we can do it again,” which has gained popularity on Victory Day in recent years, he said his country “appeared to have forgotten that war is a tragedy, its pain and suffering”.
For Dobrovolski, the war in Ukraine was also personal. After having recovered the remains of thousands of Soviet soldiers, last spring he had to bury his own son who died fighting near Bakhmut as part of the notorious Wagner group.
Sergei had signed up with Wagner from prison, where he was promised freedom in return for a six-month stint in Ukraine with the group. “I tried to do everything to stop him from going, I told him ‘what are you doing son, it’s a one-way ticket’. But I failed.”
He did not have a chance to say goodbye to Sergei but said that he recognised his son in drone footage posted by the Ukrainian army on social media days before his reported death.
“I don’t know if he killed Ukrainians or not. As a father, it was my duty to bury him, but I judge his decision,” he said, audibly emotional. “When the fighting is over, I will travel to Bakhmut myself, go on my knees and apologise to the Ukrainian people.”
In a country where even the slightest dissent is criminalised, Dobrovolski is a rare voice that pushes against the state narrative tying the two wars together.
He is not shy of his views, having previously told his story in a haunting documentary produced by the Novaya Gazeta paper.
“I am not scared, no,” he said defiantly. “My conscience is clean and that is the most important thing to me.”
For now, he plans to continue his work. In October, his team of volunteers will bury the remains of soldiers that they unearthed this year at the Valley Glory, a military cemetery close to Murmansk, also known among soldiers as “Death Valley”.
“We won’t be able to bury everyone, too much time has passed and some remains are destroyed forever,” he said. “Unfortunately there will be a lot of more burying to do for generations to come.”
