Russian town buries soldier born under Putin, killed in Ukraine

A baby-faced 20-year-old, Nikita Avrov was killed in Ukraine while serving as a gunner on a Russian tank. In front of his family's house in the small town of Luga, 150 kilometres (93 miles) south of Saint Petersburg, Avrov's casket is briefly put on display, surrounded by funeral wreaths, while the flag of his motorised infantry division flies alongside. Around 60 people file past to pay their final respects to a soldier who was born after Russian President Vladimir Putin took power in 2000. Mourners also hold a ceremony at a war memorial where an Eternal Flame burns beside monuments to Soviet soldiers killed in World War II and Afghanistan. Five fur-hatted soldiers and their commanding officer carry the coffin to the cemetery to the mournful sound of a brass band and fire their guns into the air. In this town of 30,000 people, there is little sense of the bloody military operation in neighbouring Ukraine, launched by Russian troops on February 24, to fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces depicted by Moscow as hordes of neo-Nazis. According to the local authorities, Avrov was a gunner: loading the weapons of an assault tank. He died in late March in Izyum, a small town in eastern Ukraine that was taken by Russian troops, strategically located between the cities of Kharkiv and Slavyansk. Whether officials, military or clergy, those who speak at the memorial ceremony frame his death as a patriotic sacrifice. 'When Russia shows weakness, some impure people try to bring it to its knees... But they won't manage it!', says Sergei Nikitin, a colonel. His speech echoes Moscow's official rhetoric: that the West took advantage of Russia's weakness after the breakup of the USSR and brought Ukraine under its sway. In a nearby Russian Orthodox church, a priest makes similar patriotic points. Standing outside are two former classmates of Avrov, who give their names as Sergei and Anton. A mournful mood about such deaths prevails among women present. At the cemetery, another woman, 48-year-old Svetlana, who prefers not to give her surname, expresses bemusement.

Russian town buries soldier born under Putin, killed in Ukraine

A baby-faced 20-year-old, Nikita Avrov was killed in Ukraine while serving as a gunner on a Russian tank. At his funeral on Tuesday, those giving eulogies leave no room for doubt: the private died for a good cause, for his Russian fatherland.