A world champion in tank biathlete has been killed in Ukraine.
Senior sergeant Alexei Bakulev was personally presented with his trophy by Russia ’s defence minister.
The 26-year-old won a succession of war game competitions in his T-72 but said when the war started in Ukraine that he wanted to be in a “real fight”.
Bakulev was killed from shrapnel wounds as he covered a retreat by his forces, it has been claimed.
The location where he died was not revealed.
A picture shows him being presented with a trophy by defence minister Sergei Shoigu.
He was a world champion in tank biathlon in 2017, and winner of Russia’s prestigious Army Cup two years later.
At the start of the brutal conflict in which Russia is believed to have suffered 30,000-plus losses, he said he craved testing his war game skills in a real conflict.
“I want, to be honest, to be in a real fight,” he said.
“I hope that my relatives will understand this desire if the time comes.”
He was a native of Verkh-Uimon village in the remote Altai Mountains in Siberia.
The Kremlin has lost at least 11 generals and 52 colonels in the brutal conflict yet despite the heavy toll, there is little sign of the mass dissent against Putin inside authoritarian Russia that the West hoped to see.
Earlier this month a Russian fighter went public with his complaints of exhaustion and fighting conditions in eastern Ukraine as the war shows no signs of abating.
One soldier who had fought near Kyiv, Kharkiv and is now in eastern Ukraine, complained to the Guardian of his desperate exhaustion.
Andrei, who serves with the 37th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade headquartered in Buryatia in Siberia, said he had even contacted a lawyer to find out whether his deployment to the front is even legal.
He also complained that he had not seen his wife for months.
“I have been fighting in Ukraine since the start of the war, it has been over three months now," Andrei said.
"It is exhausting, my whole unit wants a break, but our leadership said they can’t replace us right now."
The ex-UK army comrade of a British soldier sentenced to death in Ukrain,. meanwhile, has branded the 'disgraceful' judgement a war crime.
Aiden Aslin, 28, and British Army veteran Shaun Pinner, 48, were convicted of taking action towards violent seizure of power at a show trial in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, a Kremlin proxy.
Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan is a former comrade of Mr Pinner’s as they served in the same Royal Anglian Regiment together.
He has condemned the sentencing of both men as he spoke about Mr Pinner, who is from Bedfordshire, saying: “This is disgraceful and I utterly condemn it.
“Shaun is a soldier and should be treated as such."
