Musician Yuri Shevchuk is reunited with a soldier he met in Chechnya in 1995

Journalist Yuri Dud has tracked down one of the soldiers who appears in footage of musician Yuri Shevchuk’s visit to Chechnya in 1995. The man is named Oleg Sitnikov and today he lives in Kaliningrad. Dud interviewed him on his popular YouTube channel and arranged for him to meet again with Shevchuk. Sitnikov told Dud that he lives in veteran housing and drives a 1983 Volkswagen “Golf,” and is saving the 70,000 rubles ($1,225) he needs to upgrade to a 1991 model. Dud’s audience has already launched a collection drive.

Best known as the lead singer and songwriter of the rock band DDT, Yuri Shevchuk traveled to war-torn Chechnya in 1995 to meet with Russian soldiers fighting a bitter war against separatists. In footage of Shevchuk’s visit, the soldiers tell him their names and hometowns. Most of the men in these videos are believed to have been killed.