A pattern of desecration In Russia, graves of soldiers killed in Ukraine are being set on fire, defaced with swastikas, and smeared with blood and feces
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the graves of soldiers who died fighting for Russia have been regularly vandalized — set on fire, defaced with swastikas, and stripped of military flags. Over the past three years, journalists from Sever.Realii, a division of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, have documented at least 55 such cases. In a new report, they examine what’s happening at the gravesites of those killed in Ukraine. Meduza shares a translation of their investigation.
Acts of vandalism targeting military graves in Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine began in the early months of the full-scale war. The first known incident took place in annexed Crimea, where Valeria Goldenberg, a 61-year-old pensioner originally from Poltava, dumped blood and feces on the grave of Valentin Isaychev, a mortar operator killed in the war. Goldenberg said she acted “out of a sense of revenge and compassion for the people of Ukraine.” She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years in prison. She has since been released.
In 2022, such cases remained rare. That year, aside from Goldenberg’s, only two other criminal cases were reported. In June, in Russia’s Tambov region, unidentified individuals wrote a message that “glorified the heroes of Ukraine” on paving stones near the grave of Anton Manokhin, a National Guard serviceman killed in late February. Authorities didn’t disclose what exactly the message said.
A few months later, five teenagers from Zabaykalsky Krai were detained and accused of vandalizing the grave of Corporal Sergey Zaytsev, who had also died in the war. Investigators alleged the teens defaced another grave with insults, scattered wreaths, and left trash at the site. No verdicts were publicly reported in either case.
A sevenfold increase
By 2023, the number of reported cases had surged sevenfold. Sever.Realii documented at least 21 incidents, including arson attacks on graves and defacements featuring the letter Z — now a symbol of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — as well as Nazi imagery.
In Khabarovsk, local activist Angel Nikolaev was sentenced to 15 years in prison for setting fire to a military enlistment office. He was also charged with removing military symbols from buses and painting what authorities described as Nazi-like symbols on Russian flags placed on the graves of soldiers who had fought in Ukraine.
In Miass, a city in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region, unknown individuals set fire to the grave of a serviceman in November 2023. A criminal case was opened and the grave was restored, but no arrests were made.
In February 2023, the grave of 20-year-old soldier Vladimir Tsygony was set on fire at a cemetery in Yevpatoriya, Crimea. Tsygony had served in Russia’s 810th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade and fought in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, including in the sieges of Mariupol and Volnovakha, before being killed in the Kherson region in October 2022. Other arson attacks on graves were reported in Chita, Artyomovsk, Ryazan, Ivanovo, and the Novosibirsk region.
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In Vladivostok, the graves themselves were left intact, but 39 Russian flags marking them were cut down. Police didn’t identify any suspects but offered a 200,000-ruble (over $2,000) reward for information. In Khabarovsk, red swastikas were painted on Russian flags and military banners. Police said 24 gravesites were affected.
One case did not fully meet the definition of grave vandalism, but still led to criminal charges. In October 2022, pensioner Irina Tsybaneva left a handwritten note on the grave of President Vladimir Putin’s parents. It read: “Parents of a serial killer, take him, we have so much pain and misery from him, the whole world prays for his death [illegible]. Death to Putin, you raised a freak and a killer.”
Tsybaneva was quickly detained and placed under house arrest, charged with desecrating a gravesite motivated by ideological hatred. She later said her act was not meant as a political protest, and the note was never intended to be seen publicly. In May 2023, she was sentenced to two years’ probation.
‘Just fooling around’
In 2024, the number of vandalism cases targeting the graves of Russian soldiers who fought in Ukraine continued to rise, though the increase was modest — 25 incidents were reported that year. Teenagers were frequently involved.
In the Kaluga region, two teens filmed TikTok videos at a cemetery, lying on graves and dancing beside them while holding the Russian flag. One of the graves turned out to belong to a fallen soldier. The teens were sentenced to 15 days in a juvenile detention center, and their parents were fined for neglecting their parental duties.
In Volgograd, a minor and her 23-year-old boyfriend tore down flags, smashed crosses, and trampled funeral wreaths on the graves of soldiers who had taken part in the invasion of Ukraine.
In the Kemerovo region, three children between the ages of 10 and 11 vandalized 18 graves in the town of Promyshlennaya. According to police, the children had come to the cemetery to visit the grave of one boy’s stepfather, who had been killed in the war. Initially hoping to collect candy traditionally left on graves, they began smashing portrait plaques on the headstones with stones, saying they were “just fooling around.”
In Chita, a 16-year-old painted over portraits of a couple at a local cemetery and defaced the grave of a fallen soldier. He sprayed paint over the Russian flag, scrawled “UKR” across it, and wrote “Ukraine” on a Wagner Group flag. He then set fire to the flags and funeral wreaths. The teenager was sentenced to two years in juvenile detention.
By early 2025, at least five more cases of grave desecration had been reported.
One of the most high-profile incidents was the destruction of the grave of Alexander Fedorchak, a war correspondent for the state-controlled outlet Izvestia. On the night of March 31, unknown individuals set fire to the graves of Fedorchak and three soldiers who had died in the war.
Authorities opened two separate criminal cases: one for desecration of burial sites and human remains, and another specifically for damaging a military burial ground. No suspects have yet been detained.
In Kaliningrad, a resident of the town of Gvardeysk was charged after placing artificial flowers on the graves of two soldiers — and setting them on fire. In another case, a 32-year-old homeless man in Chita was arrested for setting fire to a soldier’s grave. He reportedly told authorities he had done it to keep warm.
Punishing the offenders
Russia’s criminal code includes two articles that address the desecration of graves. Article 243.4 covers the destruction or damage of military burial sites, while Article 244 criminalizes the abuse of human remains and the desecration of burial places more broadly.
From 2020 through the first half of 2024 (the most recent data available), Russian courts convicted 162 people under these two statutes. However, this doesn’t mean that all of the cases were directly related to soldiers’ graves. According to an analysis by Sever.Realii, criminal charges were brought in fewer than half of all reported incidents. In the remaining cases, authorities announced only that preliminary investigations were underway.
Still, convictions under Article 243.4 — which applies specifically to military graves — have steadily increased. According to data from the Judicial Department at Russia’s Supreme Court, there were no convictions under this article in 2020. In 2021, four people were convicted. That number rose to 11 in 2022, the first year of the full-scale war, and to 12 in 2023. In the first half of 2024, four more convictions were recorded.
Penalties under this article include fines, community service or forced labor, and prison terms of up to five years. But actual prison sentences remain rare: between 2020 and mid-2024, only six individuals were sentenced to time behind bars — four of them in 2022.
Under Article 244, which covers broader desecration of burial sites, 29 people were convicted in 2020, 25 in 2021, and 33 in 2022. In 2023, that number dropped to 22. But in just the first six months of 2024, another 22 people had already been convicted — putting the year on track to surpass previous records.