Counting Kursk’s dead Investigative journalists at ‘7x7’ identify at least 30 civilians killed during Ukraine’s occupation of Russia’s borderlands

In August 2024, Ukrainian forces launched a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region and seized control of dozens of towns. After seven months of fighting, in March 2025, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced a breakthrough by its troops and the liberation of most towns in the region, including the border city of Sudzha. According to official Russian government data, Ukraine’s offensive in Kursk displaced at least 112,000 civilians, while thousands more (exact figures remain unknown) were unable to flee the war zone for various reasons. Many of these people died under occupation — either from shelling or from a lack of medical care and essential aid.

Journalists from 7x7 have verified the names and deaths of at least 30 civilians in the Kursk region following the start of Ukraine’s offensive. Their investigation details how civilian volunteers and local Kursk officials record casualties and organize burials. Meduza translated the full 7x7 report into English.

Among the first casualties: Nina Kuznetsova and her unborn child

Artyom Kuznetsov last saw his wife, Nina, on August 6, 2024. She was already dead, lying on an operating table in the gynecology department of the Sudzha Central District Hospital. Ukrainian forces were advancing toward the village of Goncharovka, where the hospital is located.

The Kuznetsovs lived with Nina’s mother in the village of Kurilovka, about seven kilometers (four miles) south of Sudzha, along with their nearly two-year-old son, Matvey. Twenty-eight-year-old Nina was two months pregnant when she was killed. When Ukrainian shelling picked up in early August, she tried not to worry too much. Doctors had warned her of a miscarriage risk, and she didn’t want to endanger the baby.

On the day of the Ukrainian offensive into the Kursk region, the Kuznetsovs realized that they needed to flee Kurilovka. They planned to leave in two cars. Artyom drove the first, while Nina, her mother, and Matvey followed in the second.

As soon as they left the village, a man in a military uniform appeared on the roadside ahead of their cars. According to Artyom, he wore a helmet marked with blue tape [7x7 could not independently verify this account]. “Our eyes met. And then he started shooting at point-blank range. A bullet whizzed past my head,” Artyom told 7×7.

Another bullet struck Nina in the chest. She lost control of the vehicle, crashing into her husband’s car. Artyom and his mother-in-law pulled his wife, now covered in blood, into his car. Kuznetsov says the soldier who shot at them didn’t pursue.

As Artyom drove Nina to Sudzha Central District Hospital, she was still gasping for breath. Despite Ukraine’s attack, doctors remained at the hospital. They placed Nina on the operating table — where she died.

The shelling intensified, leaving Artyom little time to say goodbye to his wife. The hospital staff, along with Artyom, were forced to drop everything and flee.

Counting the dead

After the Ukrainian offensive, Father Yevgeny Shestopalov, the priest of the Holy Trinity Church in Sudzha, fled to Kursk. In the new city, he served wherever he was invited, but he declined a parish reassignment, refusing to abandon his church in Sudzha, where he had sheltered civilians in the early days of the fighting. The incursion left the church partly in ruins, its domes toppled, and the iconostasis destroyed by fire.

On the day he met with a 7×7 journalist, Father Yevgeny had conducted a Sunday service at the Church of the Ascension in Kursk’s historic district. Early in the morning, the white-and-blue church was bathed in soft light, the brightest rays illuminating an image of Jesus Christ with outstretched arms.

Shestopalov is a tall, broad-shouldered man in his fifties. He wears his dark hair in a ponytail. His face is lined with wrinkles. After the service, he throws a jacket over his cassock and steps outside, where a parishioner from Sudzha greets him. Father Yevgeny smiles warmly — he’s tried to stay in touch with all the Sudzha residents who had attended the Holy Trinity Church.

It was from these parishioners that Shestopalov learned about those killed in Sudzha. He compiled their names into a list. In December 2024, the list contained 16 names. By March, he said, that number had “more than doubled.” He received most of the names from parishioners who had been returned to Russia from Ukraine through Belarus on November 22 and March 3.

Contacting these people is often impossible. According to Shestopalov, the Russian authorities allowed almost no one access to the returned Sudzha residents, who are placed under guard. 7×7 tried to reach some of them — Valentina Polovinkina, Yulia Fursova (who gave birth while under occupation), her mother Elena Fursova, and two other relatives. Everyone either ignored the messages or refused to speak.

“Some were shot for breaking curfew [imposed by the Ukrainian authorities]. Some were hit by shrapnel. And then there were those whose hearts simply gave out. We knew nothing about one of my parishioners, an elderly woman named Ola, until people returned from Sudzha. Only then did we learn that she died at the boarding school where they were being held. A day or two later, her husband Mikhail also died. These are the realities and losses — so much anguish. And there’s no way to put it into numbers,” Father Yevgeny says.

From his parishioners, Shestopalov also learned that after August 6, the Sudzha boarding school housed people whose homes had been destroyed by shelling and airstrikes, as well as children and those unable to care for themselves. One of his parishioners, Tatyana Dyadichko, died there. Father Yevgeny still doesn’t know the date or cause of her death.

Shestopalov left his list of the dead at the altars of all the churches where priests displaced from Sudzha were holding services. He says there were no clergy left in Sudzha itself, meaning no one was available to hold services, including memorials for the dead. The most that Sudzha’s displaced priests could do was perform “symbolic funerals” without the bodies.

“This isn’t normally done. But in our case, many bishops gave their blessing for this practice, as long as we could confirm the person had indeed died. If there was any doubt, we treated them as among the living in our prayers,” Shestopalov told 7×7.

Kursk activist Vladimir Sinelnikov has compiled his own list of the dead, though he doesn’t publish names out of ethical concerns and at the request of relatives. Sinelnikov didn’t tell 7×7 how many names are on his list, though he revealed that “it’s not five, and it’s not even 55.” On January 30, local officials asked him not to disclose information about the dead.

“The [final] number [of dead] requires verification, and this work is far from complete because confirming deaths is the most challenging part. You have to go there, inspect the burial sites, and interview people. At this point, we know for certain about dozens of deaths. We know where and under what circumstances they died and where to look for the bodies so they can be reburied once the fighting ends,” Sinelnikov explained.

Residents who never left Sudzha fed information to Sinelnikov about those who died under Ukrainian occupation. They helped identify victims and locate relatives. The activist also worked with other sources to verify deaths, but at his request, 7×7 has not disclosed these sources.

Sinelnikov recorded causes of death in his list. Most victims, he says, died of “natural causes” linked to the war, such as a lack of medical care and medications. Some were killed in artillery fire. According to Sinelnikov, six people died when an aerial bomb struck the Sudzha boarding school (Ukrainian military officials reported only four fatalities). At least one person died by suicide. Another was killed in a traffic accident. 7x7 could not verify the circumstances of these reported deaths and did not publish further details known to Sinelnikov.

Deaths among the Kursk region’s residents, confirmed by 7x7

Civilians killed under Ukrainian occupation: Comparing Russian and Ukrainian claims

Officials in Russia and Ukraine have reported different casualty figures without explaining how they arrived at their numbers. This makes it difficult to assess how many people have died in the Kursk region since the start of Ukraine’s incursion in August 2024.

In seven months of occupation, Russian officials twice reported the number of civilian casualties in Kursk. On September 23, Russian Foreign Ministry representative Rodion Miroshnik stated that 56 people had been killed in the first weeks of Ukraine’s invasion. Two weeks later, in a broadcast on the Russia-24 television network, he reported 70 deaths.

The first civilian casualty information from Ukrainian officials didn’t appear until January 11, when the spokesperson for the Ukrainian military administration in the Kursk region, Oleksii Dmytrashkovskyi, stated that a civilian woman had sustained a shrapnel wound to her arm during an attack by Russian forces and died the following morning. He said the woman had been living in a boarding school in Sudzha, which at the time housed 70 local residents with disabilities, Parkinson’s disease, and other conditions

According to Dmytrashkovskyi, as of January 16, a total of 112 civilians had died in the Sudzha district during Ukraine’s occupation. He claimed that 36 of these people were killed in Russian shelling, while another 40 died of “heart attacks.” He did not specify how the others died.

Dead by “natural causes”

The relatives of Kaleria Momotkova, a senior citizen in Sudzha, were informed of her death last November. According to 7×7, she passed away on November 1. Her daughter-in-law, Marina Zaitseva, shared news of her loss on social media but did not specify the cause of death. Momotkova, 88, was a former biology teacher. A 7×7 correspondent learned that she was bedridden when Ukrainian troops seized Sudzha. Her son and daughter-in-law live outside Moscow and were unable to get her out of the city in time.

“I knew Kaleria Ilinichna very well,” said Ludmila, a neighbor who managed to flee Sudzha (she requested that her last name not be published). “We lived on neighboring streets, and my husband was in her class. She was always such a radiant woman, so stunning. When she was younger, she would walk by, and a trace of perfume would always follow her. She truly was a queen. And she held on to that regal air well into old age until she was confined to her bed.”

Before leaving the city at the beginning of the Ukrainian offensive, Ludmila left Momotkova some water and frozen meat. She said she was sure a social worker and the remaining neighbors would continue checking in on her. However, another Sudzha resident, Olga Ustinova, wrote online that social workers stopped visiting both Momotkova and 93-year-old Nina Khomenko on August 7 — just two days after Ukraine’s incursion.

Like Momotkova, Nina Khomenko was under social service care. She used a walker and hadn’t left her home for months. In early September 2024, she died in occupied Sudzha. Her relative, Alexey Shevtsov, shared the news in a comment under a post about Momotkova’s death in the group “Sudzha Online.” Shevtsov later told 7×7 that his family had also learned from Ukrainian videos about the death of Nina’s grandson, Maxim, though what exactly happened to him remains unknown.

Background

‘No one touched us. They were reasonable guys.’ Two Sudzha residents describe seven months under Ukrainian occupation

a month ago

Background

‘No one touched us. They were reasonable guys.’ Two Sudzha residents describe seven months under Ukrainian occupation

a month ago

Both Ukrainian officials and activist Vladimir Sinelnikov report that illness and lack of care were among the leading causes of civilian deaths in areas occupied by the Ukrainian army. Most of those who died were elderly people dependent on social services, had no relatives in the area, and were unable to evacuate. The Russian authorities also failed to organize their relocation. The exact number of people who died from “natural causes” between August 2024 and March 2025 remains unknown. 7×7 confirmed at least five such cases.

Mikhail Yefimov, a caretaker at the Sudzha Regional Museum, survived a concentration camp in Poland in 1941. By the age of 90, he’d suffered multiple heart attacks and required constant medical care, colleagues told 7×7. Museum staff learned of his death under Ukrainian occupation in early December from Sudzha residents who were later returned to Kursk by the Ukrainian authorities.

Through interviews with evacuated residents, 7×7 learned that the relatives of missing Kursk residents desperately sought information by watching Putin’s Expendables, a program released by the Ukrainian Territorial Defense network TRO Media. Filmed by Ukrainian military journalists in the occupied Kursk region, the show is designed to demonstrate how well Ukrainian soldiers treated Russian civilians. In some episodes, local residents praised the Ukrainian military and criticized the Russian government for abandoning them.

In one episode of Putin’s Expendables, Alexander Naidenko from the town of Zaoleshenka, outside Sudzha, called out to his niece, Anna, explaining that his mother, Tamara, had died. She was “already old” and could not survive the occupation, he said.

7×7 found a social media page for an Alexander Anatolievich Naidenko from Sudzha, as well as records showing that someone with his full name ran for a seat in the Sudzha district representative assembly in 2009. Journalists also found a user named Anna Koneva in the community “Podslushano Sudzha” searching for Naidenko and his mother, where she identified herself as his niece. However, Anna did not respond to 7×7’s messages.

Another case involved Nikolai Gorlachev from Sudzha, who was nearly immobile at the time of the Ukrainian offensive due to a hip fracture and a previous stroke, according to his daughter Lyudmila Gorlacheva. In one video (7×7 obtained a screenshot but couldn’t locate the original source), Lyudmila sees a neighbor who, speaking on camera, accuses her of “abandoning her father” and claims that Nikolai “lay locked inside for 10 days” before Ukrainian soldiers found him.

The neighbor and another Sudzha resident reportedly cared for Nikolai for 25 days, “feeding him from a spoon, giving him water from a bottle,” but he ultimately passed away. According to the woman, Nikolai’s grave was dug near a road, but his burial was delayed while they waited for help.

Lyudmila Gorlacheva told 7×7 that, according to various reports, her father was ultimately buried “either in a garden or in a cemetery,” but she declined to meet with a 7×7 correspondent to discuss the matter further.

Unceremonious burials

Several relatives of those who died in areas occupied by the Ukrainian army learned where and how their loved ones were buried through the show Putin’s Expendables. One of the people who appeared on the program in November was a woman named Anna Kapustina, who came to Sudzha from the town of Leonidovo, which she said had been completely destroyed. (The Russian military mentioned Leonidovo 79 times in reports about occupied locations struck by its forces. Russian troops recaptured Leonidovo on January 17.) Anna said she buried two elderly relatives in her garden before leaving the town, but she didn’t mark their graves with crosses or explain how they had died. 7×7 was unable to reach her for more details.

In another video released by the Ukrainian military last fall, a Sudzha resident named Andrey Karpenko said “our girls” carried out multiple burials, assisted by his neighbors, the Khamidov family (7×7 could not confirm which family he was referring to). Karpenko added that this was how a bedridden disabled woman named Valentina was buried. In the comments under the video from the Ukrainian military, two users mentioned that they knew Andrey. 7×7 found a VKontakte page belonging to an Andrey Karpenko from Sudzha that was last online on August 6, 2024. 

“Under occupation, people buried the dead by themselves. If there were religious people around, they could, of course, say prayers. But as for how exactly the burials happened, we can only guess. I doubt there were coffins,” said Father Evgenii Shestopalov in an interview with 7×7. The priest said neighbors buried his friend, Yuri Kravchenko, without a coffin after Yuri’s body lay in a roadside ditch for two days.

On December 30, 2024, administrators of the “Podslushano Sudzha” group published an unattributed obituary for Yuri Kravchenko, stating that he had been driving through the town of Makhnovka when he stopped at a gas station to help wounded Russian conscripts. He was killed in a drone strike. On social media, people referred to Kravchenko as the village council elder and a Cossack of the Sudzhanskaya stanitsa. 7×7 classified him as a civilian because evidence suggested he was an unarmed volunteer helping evacuate Sudzha residents.

Nina Kuznetsova and her unborn child weren’t the only civilians killed in Kurilovka on August 6. That same day, in the same town, 28-year-old Alexey Trubitsyn died while driving from Kursk to collect his mother. Alexey’s mother eventually set out to find her son when he never arrived. A relative told the media outlet Readovka that Ukrainian forces controlled the location where Alexey was killed.

According to Nina Kuznetsova’s husband, Artyom Kuznetsov, Ukrainian soldiers told Alexey’s mother that her son had died in a landmine explosion. They allowed her to retrieve his body and bury him in her courtyard. 7×7 was unable to reach Trubitsyn’s mother.

“In towns and around the city, people buried the dead wherever they could: in gardens, greenhouses, in front of houses, behind houses. Some simply didn’t have the strength to bury their loved ones on their own — most of those who remained in the city were sick, elderly, and alone, without any means to evacuate. In these cases, Ukrainian soldiers helped with the burials,” said activist Vladimir Sinelnikov, adding that some people were buried at the Goncharovskoye Cemetery near Sudzha:

At the time of publication, journalists from 7×7 had not found any photos or videos of garden or courtyard burials in the Kursk region similar to the numerous scenes of such burials in cities like Mariupol during the Russian assaults of early 2022.

What the Red Cross did to track deaths and burial sites

7×7 found no evidence that the Russian authorities recovered the bodies of civilians who died in areas under Ukrainian control. According to Father Evgenii Shestopalov, negotiations between the two sides were difficult, and transferring the bodies could only have happened through a third country, such as Belarus. Several dozen living civilians returned to Russia by this “green corridor” on November 22 and March 3, when Ukraine and Russia agreed to repatriate 46 and 33 noncombatants, respectively.

The International Committee of the Red Cross acted as an intermediary in setting up these humanitarian corridors. The organization provides aid and protection to those affected by war and violence. However, it is unclear whether Ukraine and Russia discussed the transfer of bodies for burial under the Red Cross’s mediation.

According to Alexey Gaponov, the head of the Red Cross Kursk branch, the organization collects death reports from residents and passes them to the Internal Affairs Ministry. However, a person is not officially declared dead until their body is found. Gaponov refused to disclose to 7×7 the number of deaths known to the Red Cross, citing a government-imposed gag order.

The Russian Red Cross, together with volunteers, has been documenting makeshift graves in the Kursk region, though the list is not available to the public. Gaponov says volunteers and evacuated residents report these unofficial burials through the Red Cross website, and the information is then shared with the police.

Gaponov told 7x7 that he doesn’t know the exact number of makeshift graves but estimated that there were “several dozen.” He said officials would have to investigate these burial sites after Russian forces regained control of the area, though he stressed that finding survivors would remain the top priority.

Photos

‘The city is just gone’ Photos from Sudzha, back in Russian hands after seven months of Ukrainian control

a month ago

Photos

‘The city is just gone’ Photos from Sudzha, back in Russian hands after seven months of Ukrainian control

a month ago

How the authorities are supposed to handle bodies (and what actually happened)

The Kursk regional authorities have a formal protocol for the retrieval of civilian bodies from “gray zones” — areas not controlled by the Ukrainian military but still under heavy assault. For example, in the months following Ukraine’s incursion into the region, officials recognized gray zones in the Bolshesoldatsky, Korenevsky, and Glushkovsky districts.

7×7 obtained documents from the heads of these districts and the regional government outlining how the retrieval of remains was supposed to happen. According to these documents:

• Information about civilian bodies is handled by an interdepartmental task force under the regional branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry.
• The Defense Ministry is responsible for transporting bodies out of a combat zone.
• The Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination and the regional military investigative department are responsible for sorting, recording, and storing the remains.
• A forensic expert from the Bureau can be sent to sites where bodies are found in emergency zones inside the Kursk region. (However, as of mid-January 2025, not a single forensic team had been deployed. The entire Kursk region remained classified as an emergency zone.)

Local officials in the Kursk region’s Bolshesoladatsky, Korenevsky, and Glushkovsky districts signed contracts with funeral service companies to transport bodies from these municipalities to medical facilities, but transfers were possible only if conditions permitted. The head of the Korenevsky district told 7x7 directly that retrieving bodies from “gray zones” under enemy fire required the military’s approval because private contractors had no defenses against shelling or drone attacks.

Although a formal process exists, people have sometimes found it necessary to pressure the authorities to recover the bodies of their loved ones from the “gray zone.” For example, the husband of Yana Grebennikova resorted to direct advocacy to get back the body of his 22-year-old late wife, who was killed along with her parents in the Glushkovsky district on August 29.

According to Russian war correspondents, 10 days before Grebennikova and her parents died, Ukrainian forces destroyed a bridge over the Seym River in the small town of Karyzh, outside Glushkovo. In response, the Russian military built a pontoon crossing, which the Grebennikov family tried to use on August 29 to flee the area.

According to Russia’s Investigative Committee, as their car was crossing, Ukraine dropped a guided aerial bomb on the pontoon. Sources told 7×7 that the parents’ bodies remained on the bridge while Yana’s body fell into the river. A couple of days later, someone (it’s unclear who) dragged her remains ashore. A relative of the Grebennikovs said that “uniformed men” came to examine the body and then left.

A relative of the family told 7×7 that the police only retrieved Yana’s remains after her husband personally appealed to former acting Kursk Governor Alexey Smirnov and the regional prosecutor’s office. 7×7 was unable to reach her husband, but a family friend told the outlet that Yana and her parents were buried in Belgorod — where a close relative lived — five days after they were killed.

7×7 obtained a document signed by Dmitry Demyanenko, deputy chairman of the Kursk Regional Security Committee, stating that a “military officer from Rylsk” delivered Yana Grebennikova’s body to the Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination in Kursk on September 3, 2024.

In the early days of Ukraine’s offensive, two posts appeared in the “Podslushano Sudzha” VKontakte group written by the wife and daughter of Ivan Bakhtyr, begging the authorities to retrieve his body from the small town of Cherkasskoye Porechnoye, outside Sudzha.

According to the pro-war blogger Kirill Fedorov, Ukrainian infantry units, tanks, and armored vehicles were moving through Cherkasskoye Porechnoye at the time, and Russian forces were attacking them with “Lancet” drones. A month later, the “Dva Majora” Telegram channel posted a video of a Russian FAB-3000 bomb strike in the same area.

On August 9, Ivan Bakhtyr’s daughter, Elena Naidenko, posted the following message:

Based on social media data, Bakhtyr’s wife and daughter managed to flee from Cherkasskoye Porechnoye to Kursk. The women declined to speak with 7×7, but a relative said that “a couple of people” remained in the town, and the family hoped that they “did something with the body.”

On March 9, 2025, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the recapture of Cherkasskoye Porechnoye by the “Sever” military group. The town had been under Ukrainian control for seven months. RIA Novosti released a video of Russian soldiers raising the tricolor flag over the ruins of a local church. On March 10, one of Ivan Bakhtyr’s relatives told 7×7 that his family planned to return to the town after receiving the army’s permission. However, he noted that they might not be allowed to claim Ivan’s body until DNA tests were completed, which happened with another body in the neighboring town of Russkoye Porechnoye. Two days later, Bakhtyr’s daughter confirmed on social media that his body had not been removed from Cherkasskoye Porechnoye.

Almost two months earlier, on January 17, Russian troops had liberated Russkoye Porechnoye. That same day, the Bryansk Front Telegram channel circulated two videos allegedly filmed by Russian soldiers in basement ruins. The footage showed badly decomposed bodies.

The video’s creators claimed the victims were senior civilians, that their hands were bound, and that they had gunshot wounds. Russia’s Federal Investigative Committee subsequently launched a terrorism probe, alleging that 22 people had been killed and dumped in the basement. The Ukrainian authorities dismissed these claims as propaganda.

On January 21, acting Kursk Governor Alexander Khinshtein pledged his administration’s support to help families bury the dead. He repeated this promise 10 days later, but as of publication, it is unclear if any funerals have taken place.

The Russian government hasn’t released the names of the alleged basement victims or specified how they died. 7×7 journalists tried to find evidence from friends and family members on social media but found nothing.

In early February, the Russian state TV network Rossiya aired an interview with Alexander Sankov, presenting him as a “relative of a victim in Russkoye Porechnoye.” However, Sankov later told the media outlet Agentstvo that his father’s body had never been found — the deceased person he spoke about previously was actually a neighbor. On March 6, the independent investigative outlet Proekt published a report highlighting contradictions in the Russian Investigative Committee’s claims and statements by captured Ukrainian soldiers who had confessed to killings. Proekt also presented evidence showing that the supposed civilian massacre was likely a staged media campaign.

Further reading

Ukraine withdraws from Sudzha amid Russian advance in Kursk region

a month ago

Further reading

Ukraine withdraws from Sudzha amid Russian advance in Kursk region

a month ago

The body-recoverers

Maria Skrob, a cosmetologist, spent most of her life in the Kursk region’s Korenevsky district, though she recently moved to the capital city. At the start of the Ukrainian offensive, she created a private chat group called “Help for Korenevites” to assist those evacuating residents from dangerous areas. According to the Kursk publication Drug Dlya Druga, Skrob helped evacuate 655 people living near the border within the first three months of fighting. Among them was 98-year-old WWII veteran Klavdiya Tursina-Voytova, whom the local authorities forgot to take with them.

The volunteers in Skrob’s chat warned residents daily against traveling to the town of Korenevo, citing landmines, grenade tripwires, missile strikes, and bombs dropped by drones. But people still tried to return to the area and kept dying.

A 7×7 journalist found messages from volunteers in Skrob’s chat reporting the retrieval of 17 civilian bodies from Korenevsky district and their transfer to morgues in Kursk between September 24 and December 7, 2024. In some cases, the military police assisted in transporting the remains. On January 13, 2025, Skrob wrote that all civilian bodies had been removed from Snagost, Kremyanoye, Korenevo, and part of Lyubimovka. The search continued in other towns.

According to Skrob, the Defense Ministry outfitted volunteers’ vehicles with electronic warfare systems and “Bulat” drone detectors. This allowed volunteers to enter the most dangerous parts of the Korenevsky district to search for bodies. Additionally, the “Polk Margo” organization, which supports the military, provided volunteers with 200 body bags, Skrob told Kurskie Izvestia in November.

Volunteers often had to retrieve heavily decomposed bodies and identify them using reconnaissance drone footage from August 2024, filmed and shared online by people like Russian soldier Platon Mamatov. Volunteers compared what they found with the images from August (when the remains were still recognizable).

During her time as a volunteer, Maria Skrob lost her disabled mother, her 96-year-old grandmother, and her stepfather. They had been living in the town of Krasnooktyabrskoye in the Korenevsky district. In mid-September, Maria managed to enter the town and found her family home destroyed. She visited the ruins daily, clearing debris. Two weeks later, she discovered a bone from her mother with a titanium implant and later found the rest of the body. She also discovered the remains of her stepfather and grandmother.

“I dug up their bodies with my own hands,” Skrob said at a meeting with former Kursk Governor Alexey Smirnov, blaming district head Marina Degtyareva for failing to organize an evacuation. Skrob said she also holds the Ukrainian army responsible for her family’s deaths.

On November 18, Maria buried her three relatives, though their final resting place remains unknown. She refused to speak with 7×7 journalists.

What Ukrainian officials say about the civilian casualties in the Kursk region

In October 2024, Ukrainian military officials told The New York Times that they had committed “no recorded cases of violations” of the Geneva Conventions in Kursk.

“Given Russia's long history of false numbers and propaganda, there is simply no way of verifying their claims. If Russia wants to show the real situation on the ground, it can grant such access to the U.N. and International Committee of the Red Cross,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhiy Tykhyi told Reuters in September 2024.

In mid-August 2024, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights requested access to Russia’s Kursk, Belgorod, and Bryansk regions to assess the human rights situation on the ground. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova responded that she hoped this request was “not just a performance, but a step toward awakening.” However, since then, Russian officials have not indicated that international observers are permitted in the border territories.

In December 2024, Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the U.N. Secretary-General, told the newspaper Izvestia: “The United Nations calls on all sides to make every effort to prevent civilian casualties.”

7×7 reached out to Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Zelensky’s administration, to ask if there were any negotiations with Russia over the transfer of civilian bodies and if Kursk residents had asked Ukrainian forces for help with burials. Podolyak did not respond.

* * * 

We still don’t know for certain what happened to the body of Nina Kuznetsova, who died on that operating table at the Sudzha District Hospital. On October 9, the news outlet Daily Storm cited unnamed relatives in a report claiming that her body may have been stored in the hospital’s morgue. Her husband, Artyom, didn’t disclose the whereabouts of his wife’s remains to 7×7:

Artyom’s mission is to bury Nina in Kursk. He says he’s not afraid of seeing her remains. Nothing could be worse than the horror he’s already known.