The main military cemetery will be expanded in the Russian Federation – media

The memorial cemetery in Mytishchi near Moscow will run out of space ahead of schedule due to losses in Ukraine.

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The Russian Ministry of Defense used 17 hectares of the Pirogovsky forest park in the urban district of Mytishchi, Moscow region, to expand the military cemetery “Pantheon of Defenders of the Fatherland”. Novaya Gazeta Europe reported this yesterday.

The plans of the Ministry of Defense to expand the largest military cemetery in the Russian Federation were previously confirmed by the Mytishchi city district administration. In February, a post appeared in a local group on the social network Vkontakte in which local activists reported the decision of the head of the district, Yulia Kupetskaya, to transfer 17 hectares of forest territory adjacent to the “pantheon ” at the use of the Ministry of Defense, which is not available to the public.

Representatives of the district administration explained in the comments that this happened at the initiative of the Russian Ministry of Defense – the department allegedly uses 10 hectares to expand the “pantheon” and 7 hectares to create a municipal cemetery.

At the same time, the confiscated territory is surrounded by the facilities of the Ministry of Defense, which is why access to it – including the territory of the future municipal cemetery – is currently prohibited, the Mytishchi administration indicated. At the same time, the district authorities claim that this area is not part of the forest park.

The publication writes that the federal military memorial cemetery, which later became the “Pantheon of Defenders of the Fatherland,” was opened in June 2013, and from then until July 1, only 353 burials were made there. But a large number of new graves appeared in the cemetery after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – since February 24, 2022, “900 graves have been added to the burial sector of those killed at the front in Ukraine alone .” Burials with military honors at the cemetery take place every day, say residents of the village next to the memorial.

The cemetery itself is closed to the public, as it is a Russian Ministry of Defense facility. Before the planned expansion, its area, according to official data, was 52.24 hectares – it is assumed that 40 thousand burials can be placed on this territory in the next 200 years. However, the military department has made plans to expand the memorial back to 2023, the publication stated.

In this cemetery, among others, there is the grave of the mercenary and leader of the Wagner group Dmitry Utkin, who died together with the chairman of the PMC Evgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash in August 2023.

Let’s remember that, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Russia’s losses in the war against Ukraine have exceeded 470 thousand military personnel. In just one day on May 3, more than 1,200 Russians were killed.

In this regard, the Russian media learned, in early April, the names of more than 50 thousand Russian military personnel who died in Ukraine. Among them are 3,354 officers.

At the end of February 2024, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky announced the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for the first time since the beginning of the war – 31 thousand people.