Mother demands zinc coffin opened in Urals
In Serov, the mother of a special military operation soldier has refused for over a year to retrieve the remains of the deceased from the morgue. The woman does not believe that her son is in the zinc coffin and demands an independent genetic examination, as the relatives have a notification that the serviceman did not die but was captured.
But the parents are not allowed to open the coffin before the funeral. In turn, they do not intend to proceed with the burial without a medical conclusion.
This tangled story was investigated by E1.RU special correspondent Daria Manokhina.
Dreamed of Being a Tanker
24-year-old Mikhail is a career officer, a graduate of the Kazan Tank School. In the family, he is the eldest of three children. His passion for military equipment was noticed by his parents in childhood—as a boy, he collected model tanks that still stand on the shelves of the apartment.
After school, Misha did not think long about where to apply. First, he wanted to train as an artilleryman, but the exams required physics, which he struggled with—while future tankers in Kazan did not need it for admission.
“My grandfather was a sniper-scout during World War II. My father graduated from the Suvorov Military School, then studied two courses in artillery but realized it wasn«t for him. But Misha continued all this,” says the soldier»s mother, Lyudmila. “He really enjoyed studying. He was in the color guard, they participated in the Victory Parade, that group was taken everywhere.”
In Kazan, Misha got married, but immediately after graduating from the school, he left his young wife and went to the special military operation. The young military man led a tank unit. However, the soldier spent very little time in the special operation zone. On August 14, 2023, he went on a combat mission and did not make contact again.
And two and a half months later, his wife received a notification that the tank platoon commander was captured under unclear circumstances.
Confusion in Documents
The notification that Mikhail is a prisoner of war was received by his relatives on November 1, 2023. The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that he is included in the list of servicemen subject to exchange. And a week later, his parents were called from the Rostov morgue and told that the remains of their son were with them.
“They started psychologically pressuring us and saying that your son died and that we need to accept the cargo: ‘Prepare a place in the cemetery, you need to bury him.’ I started saying: ‘Wait, there«s some mistake here.’ They sent us an accompanying letter in Telegram, in which the surname was not ours. I latched onto that too: ‘Who are you trying to send us? We have a completely different surname.’ This is a different person,” the soldier»s mother recounts.
Mikhail«s relatives wrote to all authorities, trying to find out what actually happened to the special military operation participant. And every time, his mother says, they received different answers. At the beginning of 2024, the acting commander of the military unit reported that the soldier is not listed as killed or missing. And in July of the same year, “cargo 200” with the lieutenant»s name on the lid was delivered to Krasnoturinsk.
“Who identified these remains? We did not identify them. They did not give us the dog tag. The belongings were sent to us. What if it«s someone else»s son? What if our child returns from captivity, how will we look him in the eye as a family? He will say: mom, you didn«t even double-check—I»m alive, and you buried me,” the serviceman«s mother says through tears.
In the Serov military commissariat, there is a document from Rostov forensic experts that a DNA examination confirmed the relationship between Lyudmila and the person whose remains are in the coffin. But the woman does not trust these results.
The soldier»s family insists on conducting an independent examination, but for that, they need to open “cargo 200”—and the morgue refuses to do so.
“I understand everything, and if the examination shows that it is indeed our child, we will take him. But we must be 100% sure. They tell us: if you are going to bury, then we will open the coffin, and you will transfer the body. But we need to take DNA from the remains, regardless of what was taken in the Rostov morgue, and seal it back up for the duration of the examination,” the mother says.
To open the coffin, the family has been going in circles for over a year. According to State Duma deputy Maxim Ivanov, the military investigative committee can approve the examination. Mikhail«s relatives have already applied there with a petition.
The IC reported that it sent a request to the military prosecutor»s office, and there the family was told that issuing permission to open the coffin is not within their competence, but they noted that relatives have the right to identify the remains.
“Laws do not contain any prohibition on opening the galvanized transport container containing a human corpse and taking samples for molecular genetic examination,” states the official response from the Yekaterinburg garrison military prosecutor«s office.
“Possibilities Exhausted”
Lyubov does not lose hope of finding her son alive. As E1.RU was told by Sverdlovsk ombudsman Tatyana Merzlyakova, the soldier»s mother also sought help from the human rights commissioner«s office. She sent a screenshot of a video from one of the Telegram channels that post information about prisoners of war. In the recording, the woman noticed a soldier with a build similar to her son»s. His face was covered.
“We continue to work on searching for her son, but so far we have not found him and have not been finding him. At the moment, I can say that all possibilities of searching for him in captivity have been exhausted,” Tatyana Merzlyakova told E1.RU.
Earlier we wrote about how in the Urals, a mother opened a zinc coffin to find out the cause of her son«s death. It depended on whether she would receive “Putin»s” payments. Read how this story ended.
All news about the special operation we collect in a special section.
