The spiralling death toll among Russian troops was laid bare on Thursday as some of the young soldiers who died in Ukraine were named.
Many are so young they lived their entire life under Vladimir Putin’s rule — as president and prime minister — before dying in his bloody war.
At least 25 soldiers who were born after the last day of 1999 when Putin came to power are known to have died in the war, and there are believed to be many more so far undisclosed.
Many had joined the army or Russian national guards as conscripts only to be ordered or cajoled to sign contracts enabling the military machine to send them to fight.
Most were told they were taking part in military drills inside Russia, but were then sent to their deaths in Ukraine.
They had not expected when they were drafted to be ordered to fight in a war since conscripts are not permitted to do so, but the Russian defence ministry has admitted this law was flouted.
Nor had their parents and loved ones expected this.
They are seen as Putin’s cannon fodder, a small part of the overall Russian death toll which the West estimates at around 17,000, but which Moscow refuses to publicly disclose.
The teenagers from the “Putin Generation” who he sent to their deaths include the youngest so far publicly identified - David Arutyunyan, 18, from Kyakhta, born on 8 March 2003.
He was conscripted to the army and served in Pskov, headquarters of Russia’s elite paratroopers. His convoy was hit by Ukrainian artillery.
Yegor Pochkaenko was sent 5,150 miles by Putin’s war machine from his home in Belogorsk, eastern Russia, to die the day before his 19th birthday as hostilities began.
Ilya Kubik, 18, like the two above, was a conscript who later signed as a contract soldier. He was buried on 23 March in his home city of Bratsk, Siberia.
Khusinbai Masharipov, 19, was buried in his native Safakulev village soon after changing his status from conscript to contract soldier.
Anatoly Torsunov, 19, from Kungur, Perm region, had trained as a welder before being sent to his death in Ukraine.
Private Fesenko Denis Sergeevich, 19, died on 23 March, as a gunner-assistant on a grenade launcher.
Alexey Kuzmin, 19, from Magnitogorsk was buried on 21 March.
From the same Urals city, Alexander Bondarev, 19, was buried by grieving relatives four days later.
Alexey Martynov, 19, was from Buryatia, a Buddhist region of Siberia that has been grievously hit by deaths in Ukraine.
He had entered the Ulan-Ude College of Railway Transport when he was called up as a conscript initially as a marine on the Pacific coast.
Older war dead born under Putin include:
:Sergey Cherepov, 20, from Novosibirsk region, died on 27 February, but was buried almost a month later after his remains were returned to his village of Morozovka in Siberia.
:Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov, 20, from the Russian Pacific region, whose fatal wounds were so severe his coffin was sealed.
:Yegor Nazarov, 20, from Vikhorevka, in the Irkutsk region of Siberia, who was buried on Wednesday.
:Mikhail Bakanov, 20, from Balakovo, Saratov region, declared dead on 22 March.
:Sergey Lipsky, 20, from Gusinoozersk, Buryatia, who had risen to the rank of junior sergeant of the 37th separate motorised rifle brigade.
:Evgeny Beloborodov, 20, an orphan and another fatality from Buryatia, close to Lake Baikal in Siberia.
:Ivan Garbuzov, 20, a corporal in the national guard, from Markov, Irkutsk region, he had been an alter boy at his Orthodox Church. He was mortally wounded by a fragment of a mine while serving as an infantry fighting vehicle driver.
:Corporal Yuri Lebedev, 20, was from the same Irkutsk region and died in fighting in Chernihiv, Ukraine.
:The oldest of the war dead born early in Putin’s first presidential term included Zorigto Khotsaev, 21, another fatality from Buryatia.
He died as the second commander of the crew of an infantry fighting vehicle where he was also a gunner, part of the 11th Airborne Assault Brigade.
:Sergei Sokolov, 21, from Zubkovo, Novosibirsk region, killed in action on 16 March.
:Artur Sharafeev, 21, from Naberezhnye, Chelny
: Yegor Dmitriev, 21, from Novosibirsk region, had recently married when he was killed on 14 March .
: Aleksandr Krutiy, 21, from Krasnodar region.
: Vladislav Solomennikov, 21, from Chaikovsky, Perm region.
:Vladimir Chebotarev, 21, died on the first day of a war Russia still calls a ‘special military operation’ and was buried in Kerch.
: Lieutenant Vitaly Golub, 21, commander of a motorised rifle platoon, from Chita in Siberia, and buried in Sevastopol, in annexed Crimea.
Valentina Melnikova, 76, the executive secretary of Russian Committee of Soldiers Mothers, said she has a “terrible feeling” about the true Russian toll.
She said recently recruited conscripts are among those fighting in Ukraine.
“These conscripts were told: ‘Here is a pen and a paper, you write a request to be switched to a contract’.
“Some of them did, some didn’t. But even those who didn’t were sent in anyway.”
Melnikova has helped Russia’s mothers through two bloody wars in Chechnya, as well as a conflict in Georgia and military involvement in Syria.
Of the Ukraine war, she said: “How many days have passed? And the losses and destruction are already huge.”
She accused Russia of concealing the figures of soldiers slain in Ukraine, but commended Kyiv for providing accurate information on deaths.
She was asked by Russian journalist Katerina Gordeeva in a YouTube interview why parents and wives had not protested more.
“They are not from a social group that usually protests, and they are scattered all around Russia,” she said.
“Even when a wife knows her husband was killed, like a chat I had recently, and I ask her for his details, she won’t share them. Why? She says: ’I am scared it’ll make things worse’.”
On Russian casualties, she said that some dead and even wounded are left on the battlefield by their commanders.
“The way it was in the previous wars, when a unit leaves, they have to check who returned to the unit. But since our army isn’t into collecting bodies of the dead, and not always into picking up the wounded, all sorts of discrepancies happen. It’s cheaper to write ‘missing in action’. “
As a result it is impossible to know the correct figures for the dead and wounded, she said.
