Russian Dagger Belt Suspensions Dirk Soviet Union USSR EX. Crossing Continents is broadcast on Thursdays at 11:00GMT. Additionally, it was just two decades after WWII. , , . . . Lived in Bendigo, Victoria. Near the banks of the River Neva, close to the mass grave found by diggers, a Russian Orthodox priest chants prayers as he walks around the rows of bright red coffins laid out on the grass. Some were also left blank since soldiers had this superstitious belief that filling them would somehow lead to certain death. The Diggers were a small group who preached and attempted to practise a primitive communism based on the claim that the land belonged to the whole people of England. While ideology likely is one motivation for these soldiers, incentives such as high salaries, bonuses and opportunities for promotion and medals as well as pressure from families are also believed to play a major role. Meanwhile, Marina found something and held it up it looked like a box of soap, only it was not, it was TNT. Conditions are basic - they camp in the woods - and some days they have to wade waist-deep through mud to find the bodies of the fallen. Many of their bodies were never found. Ilya adds up that the digging has become embedded in their souls, that they need to continue doing it to find peace for themselves it has become the meaning of their lives. After that there were more and more and more, and we realized these bodies were to be found everywhere and on a massive scale.. I've known my guys my whole life, Alexander said, referring to his BARS unit and the local men with whom he volunteered. The question is, how could the workers go through and plough through a land with a tractor when they could visibly see it littered with the bodies of the dead, unburied soldiers? January 16, 2023 2:48 AM. Kustovs children took his remains and buried it next to their mothers grave who had spent her lifetime waiting for his return. "When we told them that we had found their father's remains, for them the feeling was just indescribable. It's amazing to see such rare items found in remarkable condition. The soldiers are waiting for us - waiting for the chance to finally go home.". "If you lost your job in those days you were a non-person - you didn't exist. They try to rid these unknown soldiers their anonymity. The Exploration group is just one of the 600 groups of diggers at work all throughout Russia who were able to discover a total of 500,000 remains of WWII soldiers at present. Please select the Tab Content in the Widget Settings. As Ilya puts it, workers at that time were afraid of going jobless if they refused to do the task at hand. Joining BARS is one way to join the fight if you dont fit the Defense Ministrys criteria for enlistment, three volunteer soldiers told The Moscow Times. 20th Century Battlefields Documentary Series (2007), Al Murray's Road to Berlin Documentary Series (2004), America : The Story of the US Documentary Series (2010), Andrew Marr's History of the World Documentary Series (2012), Apocalypse: Stalin Documentary Series (2018), Apocalypse: The Rise of Hitler Documentary Series (2013), Battle Stations Documentary Series (2000), Battlefield : Vietnam Documentary Series (1999), Britain's Biggest Warship Documentary Series (2018), Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty Documentary Series (2014), Britain's Bloody Crown Documentary Series (2016), Churchill's Bodyguard Documentary Series (2005), Crusade in the Pacific : World War 2 Documentary Series (1951), Liberty, The American Revolution Documentary Series (1997), Pacific : The Lost Evidence Documentary Series (2005), Russia's Lost Princesses Documentary Series (2014), The Big Picture Documentary Series (1964), The Complete History of the Second World War Documentary Series, The Conquerors Documentary Series (2005), The Hitler Chronicles Documentary Series (2018), The Inca: Masters of the Clouds Documentary Series, The Lost Evidence Documentary Series (2004), The Pacific War in Color (2018) Documentary Series, The Road to War Documentary Series (1989), The Unknown War Documentary Series (1978), Tony Robinson's History of Britain Documentary Series (2020), Wings of the Luftwaffe Documentary Series ( 1992), World War 1 in Colour Documentary Series (2003), World War II in Colour Documentary Series (2009). The Associated Press. 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. Among the crowd of relatives, also, wereTatiana Uzarevich and Lyudmila Marinkina, twin sisters in their 50s who have traveled for nine hours via plane from the remote area of Kamchatka into the site to pay their last respects to their grandfather. The diggers are exposed to horrors, too, as they seek to discover the remains and names of these WWII fallen soldiers. Nobody will convince me they planted trees for ecological reasons.". Here you have a head there a leg She pauses and gazes at the fire. She wants your attention every day, if only for a few seconds. | Nationwide | Weird and Wonderful | BBC Archive. "There must have been 30 or 40 soldiers in there. 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. Analogous to the British Territorial Army or the United States Army Reserve, those enrolled in BARS receive salaries and take part in regular military training while retaining their civilian jobs. The initial "acquaintance" with them turned out to be somewhat emotional." St Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, was one of his main targets. Here, in an area of just 10 sq km, an estimated 19,000 Soviet soldiers were killed in just a few days in 1942. Here you have a head - there a leg" She pauses and stares into the fire. , units of Cossacks and Russias so-called Special Combat Army Reserve. There are so many unburied soldiers, it will take decades to find them. 4th March 2022. There is a belief that birds flying overhead transport the souls of the dead. . On the battlefield in Ukraine, volunteers fight alongside regular soldiers, men drafted during the Kremlins partial mobilization announced in September and Wagner Group mercenaries. Here are 10 things not to do when dating a Russian woman learned the hard way: Do not ignore her. It's those one-to-one connections, particularly with refugees, that May has sought with Ukrainians as a way to help the country in the midst of war. The soldier had a family, he had children, he fell in love. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Please select the Tab Content in the Widget Settings. One of the largest volunteer groups is Russia's Special Combat Army Reserve known as BARS (snow leopard in Russian) was set up in 2015 but only actively promoted by the authorities in late 2021 in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of troops, used as little more than cannon fodder, were slaughtered. "Sometimes we find them just beneath the moss and a few layers of fallen leaves. Four layers of people one on top of the other," says Olga, as she sits by the campfire. "In just three months the German death machine covered more than 2,000km (1,250 miles) of our land. Local. The children, grand-children and great-grand-children of the soldiers they unearthed look on, some quietly sobbing. in September that employers should guarantee volunteers jobs for when they return to civilian life. Watch popular content from the following creators: ripped Lincoln(@ripped_lincoln), kgi(@ikg0x), Valerie Browne(@valerie_browne), Freedom(@i_love_freedom_peace), Kaisers_Finest(@kaisers_finest), Daniel14909(@based_militarysupportrr), Jadon_Kenobi(@jadon_kenobi), Stacy(@wicked_hoolie2.0), cthulhu113(@cthulhu113), Julia Nak(@juliaaanak) . Here is a video from the Russian War Diggers where the Germans Hurriedly threw their Equipment in the River. Russia's defense ministry said in a statement that as a result of the negotiation process, 50 Russian soldiers captured . The History Channel for an in-depth view of the Past, Here is another Relics find from the Russian War Diggers. The most essential key in this is the ID tag. The ceremony acted as the culmination of the diggers months of hard work. During World War Two, Soviet soldiers' ID tags were not made of metal - they were small ebony capsules containing a small piece of paper for their personal details. Sergei Krivenko, the head of Citizen, Army & the Law, an NGO providing legal assistance to Russian soldiers, confirmed that BARS fighters often lacked proper contracts although he said he did not know whether this was intentional or merely the result of incompetence. Please select the Tab Content in the Widget Settings. Archaeologists complained about its methods after seeing a preview. Soldiers are regularly discovered with their grenades still in their backpacks and artillery shells can be seen sticking out of the trees. One of these is Valentina Aliyeva who came to bury the father she had not seen since she was four years old. When we cleaned away some clumps of earth from the roots we saw two hands tangled up in them. Discover short videos related to russian war diggers on TikTok. , , , . We Excavated a Blown German Truck with Interesting Things! At that time, individuals who didnt have jobs in Soviet Union were non-persons living as if they didnt exist; nobody wanted to be like that, thus, they were forced to go through with the job. You have been unsubscribed from our newsletter. There was little time in the heat of battle to bury the dead, says Valery Kudinsky, the defence ministry official responsible for war graves. Marina holds up an object she has found, it looks like a bar of soap, but it is actually TNT. Another major motivating factor is money. Exploration is one of 600 groups of diggers from all over Russia who have found and reburied a total of 500,000 soldiers so far. She employs the help of her metal detector as she scans the forest, walking slowly, carefully and thoroughly under the pine trees; only the sound her instrument makes breaks the silence of the surroundings. The relics we found were Startling! These unknown soldiers are what these volunteer body hunters are looking for. Alexander lets his team follows through a strict set of protocol when it comes to every discovered remains how they must be excavated, labelled and stored. Many of their bodies were never found. He then added that Russia focused on rebuilding the war-torn country immediately after WWII ended. . . The diggers now believe that some were deliberately concealed. Russia has likely deployed these new recruits to frontline defenses in Kherson, saving more experienced troops for secondary positions, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War wrote late . Do not expect her to be politically correct. Please select the Tab Content in the Widget Settings. Come spring, they will resume their digging in the fields and forests where countless people were killed. Just as the number of volunteers in Ukraine is impossible to verify, it is also difficult to know how many have been killed. You can't help feeling touched by it.". So far the diggers have found 2,000 bodies. "Our grandfathers fought against the Nazis in World War II and now we are fighting against Nazis in Ukraine," said Vladislav Malov, 47, a volunteer who recently . When, in 1942, people in First Lt Kustov's home village heard he was missing, they suspected him of deserting and collaborating with the Germans. World War One is known for the advent of trench warfare, with opposing forces pitched against one another from dug-in positions. 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Russia Military claim they have Captured the Town of Soledar Ukraine's Donbass Defense System Collapsing Ukraine Russia Latest w/ Col Doug Macgregor Ukraine. In World War 2 thousands of soldiers were killed on the border of Germany and Russia. Red cloth was draped over the walls of the freshly-dug grave a respectful gesture that in normal circumstances was only granted to army generals. 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. But how could anyone - farmers or workmen - get on a tractor and plough over land littered with human remains? She will speak her mind, she will voice her opinions. General Assault Badge Medal bars 1939 Iron Cross 1st Class SS Porzellanmanufaktur Allach 1939 Iron Cross 2nd Class Helmets Tank Assault Badge 1914 Iron Cross 1st Class What is it worth? Four layers of people one on top of the other, Olga recalls as she sits by the campfire. 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? Free shipping. Warring countries, Russia and Ukraine have carried out a prisoner exchange with a total of 100 soldiers returning to their respective home countries, according to authorities from both countries on Sunday, January 8. They are still lying where they fell. Instead, theirs were made of small ebony capsules with an equally small piece of paper inside containing their personal details. The mine, a bleak and dull brown man-made canyon which stretches over 35 square kilometres, yields 25 million . It's our Hobby. But tracing a soldier's family can take years - on occasions more than a decade - especially if the family moved after the war. under the umbrella of the Defense Ministry and have command structures integrated into the Armed Forces. "My mum was so hungry all the time, she begged the other kids for pieces of bread at school. But the key is usually an ID tag. Analogous to the British Territorial Army or the United States Army Reserve, those enrolled in BARS. Nazi War Diggers was due to air on National Geographic on May 13. In less than three months, the advancing German army had encircled the city and started pounding it from the air. We are the ones who made him unknown.". The workers had went through far worse horrors than ploughing through lands with human remains strewn about. My mum was so hungry all the time, she begged the other kids for pieces of bread at school, she adds. As Lyudmila supplies, because her grandfather was missing in action, her grandmother did not hold the right to any financial support given to other relatives of soldiers who served in the Great patriotic War. KYIV, Ukraine. Throughout the seven decades that passed, the only connection she had with with the lost dad she longed for was a black-and-white photograph of their old family home. Sometimes we find messages with the soldiers name. If there were ukranian positions where theyre shooting at, no sniper would be so much as bothered by russians shooting at the wind. Nearby, Marina Koutchinskaya is on her knees searching in the mud. On 22 June 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the largest and bloodiest campaign in military history, aimed at annexing vast areas of the USSR to the Third Reich. In this location, measuring just a mere 10 square kilometers, about 19,000 soldiers were killed in a span of days in 1942. "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. Why does the US have 800 Military Bases around the World? Olga Ivshina is one of those who signed up for this task. But when he turns it upside down in his hand, what comes out of it is not a roll of paper, but a trickle of brown liquid. St. Petersburg, known that time as Leningrad, was one of the said campaigns main targets. The team's technician, Rafik Salakhiev, uses ultraviolet light and digital imaging to reveal the faded pencil marks. In just three months the German death machine covered more than 2,000km (1,250 miles) of our land. Read about our approach to external linking. There are times they find old coins with the soldiers remains given by their families. 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. Recently, she was able to unearth a helmet and in order for them to find its wearer, the team had to pull out two trees nearby. Russian war diggers (Youtube) Firstly, apologies if this has already been the subject of discussion elsewhere. The stop, however, is temporary. He told The Moscow Times from his hospital bed that 72 of the 98 soldiers in his unit were killed in the incident. On the battlefield in Ukraine, volunteers fight alongside regular soldiers, men drafted during the Kremlins partial mobilization announced in September and, One of the largest volunteer groups is Russia's Special Combat Army Reserve known as BARS (snow leopard in Russian) was. Why does the US have 800 Military Bases around the World? 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