In August, Russian conscripts Konstantin and Dmitry Reshka -- 20-year-old twin brothers -- died on the border with Ukraine near Belgorod.
In their native village of Karpovka in the Siberian Omsk region, friends and family are raising money for their funeral.
Their relatives still do not know the exact date of their death and have not been allowed to identify them. They were informed about the brothers' deaths in early September, before the plane with their bodies arrived at the military unit in the Omsk region.
The unit commander, who had previously promised to take them "to a safe place," has stopped responding to the twins' mother's messages.
'Golden Boys'
In the Siberian village of 1,000 residents, Kostya and Dima Reshek were known in every yard. Their older sister, Yulia, recalls that they managed to make friends in a matter of minutes wherever they went. Neighbors confirm her words.
"Always respectful, greeted others when they met, and whoever asked, they helped everyone. No one in the whole village will say a bad word about them," neighbor Mikhail Shananin said. "From an early age, they learned the harsh village life. From an early age, they became independent and earned money."
Another neighbor echoes him almost word for word.
"The guys were very calm by nature. And friendly, always together. Very hard-working, reliable. They helped everyone who asked them for help. Very responsible. Hobbies, like all young people -- music, phones. They worked at the rapeseed plant and were going to return there after the army," Olga Khristich said.
Danil Karpov from Karpovka says he hasn't just lost friends, but practically brothers.
"They are my close friends. I would even call them brothers. Since childhood, they were always busy working, helping everybody. In the village, and in the entire Tavrichesky district, there are a huge number of people who will remember them with a kind word for their deeds," he said.
Karpov said both brothers had hoped to work in construction and "help their parents. Dima said that he wanted to follow in his grandfather's footsteps and become a professional welder, while Kostya did not express any particular preferences but always grabbed any opportunity to practice and work.
"Toward the end of their studies, the guys got jobs at the Tavrichesky rapeseed plant and talked about how they would like to return to work there after the army."
Their sister Yulia says no one forced the younger brothers in the large family (Marina Reshka has seven children) to work, but from the age of 11 they got used to being responsible for firewood or, for example, carrying water to the bathhouse.
"When I found out, I looked around the village -- in every house they did something, fixed something, built something, helped in the garden. They were simply reliable," she said.
She described them as "cheerful, always smiling." Then she broke down.
"I just don't believe it. I don't believe that they died," Yulia sobs. "How will our mother [survive] all this?.... We were expecting them to come home in the fall. They themselves were already at home in their minds. Dima was waiting for training from the plant. They wanted to pay for his studies to become a welder, as he wanted. Kostya would have stayed where he was. There [at work] everyone was in shock, too."
'Don't Sign Anything!'
Relatives and friends of Konstantin and Dmitry recall them being called up in November 2023 for military service, but the brothers had no intention of serving for longer than the required year.
Karpov recalls that the brothers were sent to a tank unit in the Chelyabinsk region in Siberia for the first six months of their service, until they found out they were being sent to the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine.
"The guys mentioned that they were carefully prepared for this for a month and a half by instructors who served in the Wagner [mercenary group]. After arriving at the border, the guys did not get in touch very often, since the specifics of the area rarely allowed it, but every time they did, they said the service was going well, although there was danger -- Ukrainian drones and shelling somewhere in the distance," the twins' friend said.
"It all ended on August 8. In the morning, Dima wrote to me, said everything was fine and that there were 92 days left until demobilization. He sent several photos with his fellow soldiers and asked me to wait until he got in touch. At the end of August, I found out that neither of them would ever contact me again," Karpov said.
Their sister says the family learned of the brothers' deaths only the day before Karpov, although they had stopped communicating since August 9.
"On August 8, Kostya was online on Telegram; on August 9, Dima was. They wrote once a week -- to my parents and me separately, although we live on the same street. We were always in touch," she said.
"There was no warning [about the loss of communication], but we saw that the border [with Ukraine in the Belgorod region] had been breached on August 6 and 7, and it seemed they had not been affected. We calmed down a bit, but a week or two passed," Yulia continued.
She said that after Ukrainian forces crossed the border in the Kursk region, her mother started calling the unit, writing to the commander, and got no response.
This was despite the fact that the twins' mother had been assured by their unit commander personally that "if suddenly something goes wrong, the border is breached there or something else, the conscripts will be immediately withdrawn from those territories," Yulia said. "Now he doesn't answer her at all. We don't even know the exact date of their death."
Yulia recalls that before the brothers were transferred to the Belgorod region, she and her mother were worried they would be forced or convinced to sign a military contract and enlist. When they called her in mid-February, she told them, "Don't sign anything anywhere, under any circumstances."
"We haven't seen any papers at all. No! We're coming home in the fall," she said was their response. But then when Ukrainian troops came across the Russian border in early August, parents began writing for the unit to be withdrawn from the potential combat zone.
"There were no responses, not a single message. They simply ignored them," Yulia said.
No Word From The Front
She said the families only learned the details of the brothers' deaths because one of their fellow soldiers was a relative of the military commissar.
"Kostya and Dima were crushed in the dugout during the shelling. Another conscript, Arseny, was with them. The military commissar and this officer from the same first platoon (or the neighboring one, I don't know for sure) repeated it word for word. So we kind of believed it," the twins' sister said.
"But they didn't take a DNA sample from us, and we don't know in what condition they'll be brought back. What if the coffin is closed and they forbid us to open it? I still don't believe they died," Yulia said.
Karpov says the twins didn't want to worry their relatives.
"The guys didn't say anything special about their location. We knew they were sent to the Belgorod border; it seemed to be calmer there. This was, if my memory serves me right, before the second, I think, breakthrough [of Ukrainian forces] into the Belgorod region and the presidential decree to withdraw conscripts from the border," he recalled.
"But they were aware of the danger. They said that they don't go in groups, it's dangerous. They didn't walk around in open areas, so as not to attract a drone again. Dima mentioned that he began to pray every day for peace of mind," Karpov said.
Read the original story by RFE/RL's Siberia.Realities here
