Russian ‘Village of Military Valor’ Waits for Its Reward
Amid the majestic volcanoes and enchanted emerald forests of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s remote Far East, near Alaska, both residents and visitors describe the Indigenous hamlet of Sedanka as remarkably squalid.
Its housing stock, leftover from Soviet times, is gradually collapsing, with leaky roofs and odorous patches of mold resembling mushrooms sprouting from interior walls. Most dwellings lack running water, while blocked sewage lines feed puddles on dirt streets. Bears and other animals rummage through overflowing garbage dumps.
Yet on a visit last summer, Gov. Vladimir Solodov, the top official in Kamchatka Province, announced that he planned to bestow the prestigious title of “Village of Military Valor” on Sedanka. Although the designation was created for Soviet cities that had been significant World War II battlefields, the governor proclaimed that the village had earned the first such honor in the war in Ukraine by dispatching so many fighters.
Out of an estimated 250 people, 39 of 67 men from the hamlet deployed to Ukraine, more than 4,350 miles west. “The memory of the villagers’ heroism must be immortalized,” Mr. Solodov said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
But Sedanka has not officially received the designation, nor the extensive help for military families that the governor promised would come with it. Apart from a one-time firewood delivery, no aid has arrived, according to two residents interviewed at length and a documentary about the village.
Neither the governor nor the Kamchatka provincial legislature responded to questions for comment.
One of the residents interviewed said shining a national limelight on such a dilapidated village would be embarrassing. “It will be such a disgrace, the only village of military glory and how will they show it?” said Svetlana Zakharova, a member of the village council and the chair of the Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North. “People have nothing.”
Also, the high death toll would inevitably emerge. Of the men who went to war, 19 are now either dead or missing and presumed dead, she said.
Since the beginning of the war, the Russian government has not released any official fatality count. “The state does not want to remind people of the huge losses in human lives,” said Dr. Ivan Kurilla, a Russian history professor at Ohio State University.
Most Russian men fighting in Ukraine come from places similar to Sedanka — rural communities where a combination of poverty and patriotism pushed them to volunteer. State propaganda trumpeting the invasion of Ukraine as a continuation of World War II and the fight against fascism resonated with residents.
However, the conflict has now dragged on longer than the Soviet Union’s war against Nazi Germany. With so little to show for it despite the devastating casualty count, that comparison is beginning to ring hollow.
This account of life in the hamlet was drawn from the interviews with Ms. Zakharova and another resident, Dmitry Tulik, via chat apps, as well as a 30-minute documentary called “Back to the Middle Ages.” Made by a prominent Kamchatka legislator, the film was released in August 2024 and depicted the village in bleak detail.
Russians refer to places like Sedanka as “national villages,” meaning that most residents are Indigenous people. In Sedanka, the population is descended from the Koryaks, who once inhabited coastal regions near the Bering Sea, and the Itelmens, who populated a central river valley. Sedanka had been prosperous, even through Soviet times, known for reindeer herding, fishing and growing vegetables.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, much of the land and even fishing rights in the nearby Napana River were privatized, depriving these communities of their traditional livelihoods.
The Kamchatka peninsula is a famous breeding ground for Pacific salmon. Many enlistees from Sedanka had worked as fishermen or poachers, earning around $1,500 every few months, Ms. Zakharova said. Most locals live off credit from the food stores.
Thus military payments represent staggering sums. In Kamchatka Province, newly minted soldiers receive the equivalent of almost $33,000 for enlisting, then up to $5,200 per month.
Far-flung outposts like Sedanka are beginning to assess the costs, however.
Returned veterans seem damaged. “They come back extinguished, not happy with life,” Ms. Zakharova, 34, the member of the village council and a war widow, said in an interview. “They are different, withdrawn.”
Mr. Tulik, a 41-year-old fisherman, wanted to volunteer, but his brother, who enlisted, dissuaded him. “They brought back half my brother, psychologically speaking and literally, too — he was badly wounded,” Mr. Tulik said in an interview.
With payments from the military, his brother purchased an apartment in a neighboring village, household appliances and a quad bike. The village is isolated, dependent on helicopter flights every few days. Quad bikes can bushwhack through the forests in the summer, while frozen rivers serve as roads in winter.
War money has not changed Sedanka much. Many veterans drink away their earnings, Mr. Tulik said. “In this village,” he said, “you rarely see a sober person.”
Sedanka struggles with the lack of men, residents said. Its homes depend on firewood for heating through the long, harsh winter, and many women cannot harvest it themselves.
About 20 years ago, President Vladimir V. Putin created a new version of the military valor title for dozens of cities as a way of connecting his Kremlin with the long arc of Russian history, and particularly with the most singular achievement of the Soviet Union — defeating Nazi Germany.
It was not a new idea, noted Jonathan Brunstedt, an associate professor of history at Texas A&M University who specializes in the legacy of wars. Moscow has characterized virtually every conflict that it has initiated since 1945 — including Ukraine, the war in Afghanistan, and the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia — as a continuation of the fight against fascism.
It both legitimized the wars and spurred recruitment.
As a foreman for the local electric network, Aleksandr Chevvin, Ms. Zakharova’s husband, did not need the money. But in August 2023, he could not be dissuaded from volunteering because, he told her, his grandfather fought in World War II. A Ukrainian tank shell struck Mr. Chevvin’s dugout days after he deployed, killing him.
She did not tell their five children for 18 months, until her son in kindergarten was shocked to discover a picture of his father among the dead soldiers honored on the schoolhouse wall. Ms. Zakharova keeps waiting for Mr. Putin to appear on television to explain more clearly the purpose of the war.
The longer the conflict lasts, the more Russians will grow disillusioned with the Kremlin’s framing it as a continuation of World War II, Professor Brunstedt said. A “cognitive dissonance” will develop between the moral clarity of fighting Nazi Germany versus the ill-defined goals of the Ukraine war, especially amid the mass casualties and lack of decisive victories, he said.
Russians notice that their country “is not living up in any way to that legacy,” he said, adding that the same negative attitude developed toward the Afghan war four or five years after the Soviet Union invaded.
In January, the Ukraine war passed the telling milestone of enduring longer than what Russia calls the Great Patriotic War, or World War II, so the comparison has become problematic for the Kremlin absent tangible achievements. Russia dates the Great Patriotic War from June 1941, when Hitler invaded, shattering his nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union.
In Sedanka, hope is fading that it will be designated a “Village of Military Valor.” People rarely mention it anymore, both Ms. Zakharova and Mr. Tulik said.
The governor did send a sculpture of a seated Russian soldier cradling a dove, which replaced a statue of Lenin in a small, scruffy village park.
But Ms. Zakharova said some in the town continue to want the title as a way to assuage all the loss.
“People still ask the question: What did our guys die for?” she said.
Neil MacFarquhar has been a Times reporter since 1995, writing about a range of topics from war to politics to the arts, both internationally and in the United States.
Milana Mazaeva is a reporter and researcher, helping to cover Russian society.
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