They are sent from one of the most remote provinces of Russia to fight against kyiv. In their homeland they are considered gods, incapable of committing evil deeds. Enrollment is the only job opportunity in the area. Buryat Orthodox receive “mystical signs” of Russian victory against all enemies.
Moscow () – In the cemetery of Kjakhta, a city in Siberian Buryatia, there is a long row of dozens of coffins neatly lined up on the ground, with the names of the deceased written on the side in marker. They are the fallen soldiers in the Ukraine war. “Don’t worry, they are empty,” explains the cemetery’s guardian, Elena Takhtaeva, opening one to demonstrate. “It’s just the transport boxes, from here they take the bodies out in the zinc container and send them to the morgue, from where they return in much more solemn coffins, and then the funeral is held,” adds Elena with a sigh. “You guys are in heaven, you have done God’s will.”
The guardian looks like a character from old Russian fables, wearing a light yellow dress and a black sweater with orange roses. She has been working here for eight years for the local parish priest, Fr. Oleg Matveev, and before that she spent several years in an Orthodox monastery. He knows by name all the young deceased, “intelligent boys, true believers”, and makes his son, who is a gravedigger, put aside the already empty “Ukrainian” coffins, “which will serve for the dead who have no family “.
Kjakhta has 20,000 inhabitants and is 230 kilometers from the capital of Buryatia, Ulan-Ude, which is reached by crossing the border with Mongolia. Near the city you can see numerous gray buildings that house the 37th Brigade of the Special Guard, the main source of work for young people in the area. At least fifty of them have lost their lives in Ukraine. There are no official documents about it, but the local press describes them as martyrs and angels of the Homeland, and there are funeral orchestras that play almost every day through the streets of the city.
A journalist from Kjakhta, Aleksandr Farfutdinov, says that he continually witnesses scenes of devotion in the barracks, with lit candles and people praying and crying in front of photographs of the fallen. “They are our best sons,” says Aleksandr, who does not believe the accusations of brutal violence spread in Ukraine against some members of the 37th Brigade. “They can argue and hit each other, but they are not capable of offending anyone, much less torturing people.” Farfutdinov recounts that a young soldier, a relative of his, phoned days after leaving for the front and said that he had stolen food for the first time in his life after wandering hungry in the fields for a long time, “and I am very ashamed of that.” “.
A local historian, Aleksandr Kuzkin, reads his own poems in the central square of Kjakhta, where he glorifies the city’s history. “At one time the Chinese brought tea to Russia through our land, the local inhabitants had a lot of money, so much so that they called us the city of millionaires, a kind of Mongolian Venice.” Churches, schools, theaters were built here, and there was also a planetarium. In the central Lenin Street some old merchant houses still remain.
Kuzkin expresses nostalgia for a peaceful country, which he fears will never be the same again. He is one of the few inhabitants who is not moved by the exploits of the Buryat soldiers, among the most committed in the Russian armies in Ukraine. Even the director of the local museum, Bair Tsyrempilov, repeats that “the people and the army are one thing”, and proudly shows visitors the main hall dedicated to the Great Patriotic War where the most important piece is exhibited, a ” glorious Maksim rifle”. They have changed the inscription at the entrance, which now reads “muZej”, the museum of Putin’s Zeta.
“Before we did not pay attention to the soldiers” -says Tsyrempilov- “and now that they have sacrificed themselves in defense of the homeland, they have become our gods, replacing the doctors of the times of the pandemic”. He tells the “divine story”, when on the night of February 24-25 the alarm sounded in the museum room dedicated to the Orthodox Church. Two icons of the Savior collapsed on the one of the Mother of God, who fell to the ground, “but she did not suffer a scratch.” Father Matveev assured that it is a “mystical sign”, announcing the victory of Russia against all enemies, and now he preaches that the fallen of Kjakhta “are our saints”.
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