Kurdish man serving in Russian army killed in Ukraine
Ikram Maher, 25, was one of 300,000 soldiers ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 21 to fight against the Ukrainian army.
“He was supposed to get married but went to fight in Ukraine. We had everything ready for him and I was waiting for him to come back, I was heartbroken when he didn’t come back,” Madina Manaf, mother of the Kurdish soldier, told Rudaw's Kamiz Shadadi.
He died in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on October 21, just 20 days after being deployed to the neighboring country.
Maher was the eldest son of the family and completed compulsory service in the Russian army five years ago.
More than 20,000 Kurds live in the Republic of Adygea and the Krasnodar Region. About 200 Kurdish families live in the village of Yelenovka alone.
Like other people living in southern Russia, the villagers were forced to migrate from Armenia and Azerbaijan to the Republic of Adygea three years ago due to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Maher's body was buried in a crowded military ceremony with Kurdistan, Russia, and the Republic of Adygea flags in the Kurdish cemetery. The Kurdish cemetery in the Republic of Adygea has been very crowded for three years, but Maher's grave is the most prominent story of the cemetery.