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Vadim Shishimarin is one of the few familiar faces among the thousands of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. 21-year-old native of the small town of Ust-Ilimsk in eastern Russia and not far from Mongolia – sentenced by a Ukrainian court to life imprisonment for committing war crimes – in 2020 he signed a contract with the Russian army, which forever changed his fate.
At the start of the invasion 190,000 Russian military (including Vadim) were mobilized to fight on the territory of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin thought his troops could conquer Ukraine through a blitzkrieg, but that initial goal failed. There is currently war of attrition in the Donbassand the losses on the Russian side are significant, that the Kremlin is already admitted. The latest estimates by the Kyiv authorities show that about 32,000 Russian soldiers have already died in Ukraine, some of them high ranks in the Russian army.
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