The skeletons are never far away from Konstantin A. Dobrovolsky.
Sometimes he sleeps above them in a tiny olive-green trailer in the woods.
For 44 summers, he has traversed the hilly scrabble northwest of Murmansk, the most populous city above the Arctic Circle and the northernmost frontier in World War II, in search of the remains of Soviet soldiers who died defending it.
He has continued unearthing those bones even as descendants of the soldiers — of Russian, Ukrainian and other ethnic origins — are dying on a new front line, in Ukraine.
While the Kremlin has sought to draw parallels between the Great Patriotic War, as World War II is known in Russia, and the current war, it is a comparison that Mr. Dobrovolsky, who is categorically opposed to the invasion of Ukraine, wholeheartedly rejects.
Persons:
Konstantin A, Dobrovolsky
Organizations:
Kremlin
Locations:
Murmansk, Ukraine, Russia