The Embassy hosted a meeting with Kazakhstani search engines

Kyiv, August 30, 2021 - At the Embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan in Ukraine, a meeting was held with members of a search expedition, located in the area of hostilities of the well-known 106 Akmola cavalry division.

A Kazakhstan search group consisting of the chairman of the Memorial Zone NGO Maidan Kusainov and three representatives of the military-patriotic search club "Kokshe-Izdeu" Yerkinbek Abdullin, Yermek Rakhimov, Meyrambek Tleubay for two weeks worked in the area where in 1942 Soviet troops broke through from surroundings of the so-called "Barvenkovo cauldron".

Kazakhstani search engines worked as part of the detachment of the All-Ukrainian public association “Union“ People's Memory”, the head of which is Yaroslav Zhilkin, who led the search work this year.

The participants shared their impressions of the trip, and also talked about the main results of the search work carried out. In total, the remains of about 116 officers and soldiers were found, which have yet to be identified. Only a fifth of them had the so-called PIM - a personal identification mark. In just 5 years of work, the Ukrainian search team found almost 500 remains. However, there are much more sanitary burials in the region. According to search engines, the number of dead soldiers in this region may be in the tens of thousands.

At the meeting, Y.Zhilkin was awarded a letter of gratitude on behalf of the Ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan to Ukraine Darkhan Kaletaev for assistance in organizing the visit of Kazakhstani search engines to Ukraine and their participation directly in the field search in the area of the villages of Lozovenka, Stepok, Panteleyev and Krasnaya Balka, Balakley district, Kharkiv region.

In turn, Y.Zhilkin expressed gratitude to the Kazakh search engines for the cartographic and historical material, according to which the most likely places of accumulation of the remains of soldiers who fought in the region at that time were indicated. These are the places where the troops broke through from the German encirclement.

Following the meeting, it was noted about the need for a systematic approach to prospecting and attracting a wider number of participants.