"I would like to quote an old saying, "the war is over when the last soldier has been buried," he said after laying flowers at a war memorial in the village of Myasnoy Bor.
The Russian Defense Minister pointed out that the ministry of defense tries to provide material, information and technical assistance to search expeditions on the Russian territory.
Prior to visiting the Myasnoy Bor war memorial, the Russian defense minister made a stopover in the village of Maloye Zamoshie, the current work site of the Dolina search expedition from Novgorod. The minister witnessed the discovery of the remains of a Russian soldier at the site. After the visit, he was presented with a Soviet-made compass and a German nametag found at the site.
The minister spoke against cottage and villa developments on the burial sites of Soviet soldiers and on the former major battlefields of World War II.
"I would forbid any construction development on these territories. They are easily outlined, by the way. It is unthinkable to build cottages and villas on the remains of soldiers, and I will do everything in my power to stop such activities. If it is necessary to make changes in legislation in that respect, I am more that willing to put forward an initiative to do so," said Ivanov.
The Dolina search expedition from Novgorod conducts the search and burial of the remains of Soviet soldiers since 1988. The Dolina usually works on the territory of the Novgorod region (Russia's north-west), the site of fierce fighting during the war from the summer of 1941 to February 1944.
According to Sergei Ivanov, the remains of 77,000 Soviet soldiers and officers killed during intense battles were re-buried in the Novgorod region since the end of the war.
Overall, according to some sources, 110,000 men died on the battlefields in the Novgorod region visited by the Russian defense minister.
