A family from Ukraine will erect a monument in the Dubrovno district to a relative who died during the Great Patriotic War.

May 7, Vitebsk / Sergey Kochetov - BELTA /. A family from the Ukrainian city of Poltava has initiated the installation of a monument to the soldiers of the 251st Rifle Division who died during the liberation of the Dubrovno district, among whom was their relative. This was reported to a BELTA correspondent by Anatoly Burdo, chairman of the Vitebsk youth public association "Military-Patriotic Club 'Poisk'". The participation of the 251st Rifle Division in the operation to liberate the Vitebsk land deserves special attention, so the members of "Poisk" have been working for about 20 years to search for materials about the unit, as well as the relatives and loved ones of the fallen soldiers, the chairman of the association noted. As a result, it is the relatives of the fallen soldiers who come up with proposals for installing monuments in places of heroic battles and finance the work on their creation. For example, in 2009, a monument to the soldiers of the division was erected near the village of Sharki, Vitebsk district, on the initiative of the Grigoriev family from Lipetsk, Russia. Their father and grandfather died in the battles for Vitebsk. At the same time, the Zvonarev family from Poltava, whose relative also fought in the 251st Rifle Division and died on the Vitebsk land, came to the solemn opening ceremony of the monument. "Unfortunately, we could not fully trace the fate of their uncle Nikolai Serikov, as documents from that period could not be found in the archives," said Anatoly Burdo. Nevertheless, the searchers established that Nikolai Serikov, a soldier of the 119th Rifle Regiment of the 251st Guards Division, was wounded in December 1943 in battles near the village of Redki. He was sent to the 269th Separate Medical and Sanitary Battalion, which was deployed near the village of Rylinki, Dubrovno district, where he possibly died of his wounds and was buried in a mass grave. Having received information about the fate of their relative, the Zvonarev family also came up with the initiative to create a monument in memory of the division's soldiers. The monument has already been manufactured in Ukraine, and Vitebsk activists have installed it and carried out landscaping of the memorial site. The solemn opening ceremony of the monument is planned to be held on June 26, the day of the liberation of the Dubrovno district. Most of the fallen soldiers of the 251st Rifle Division were reburied in the post-war period in the 1990s thanks to the active work of Vitebsk searchers. A people's museum of military glory of the Vitebsk Order of the Red Banner of Suvorov 215th Rifle Division has been established at Vitebsk Vocational School No. 19, which houses the "Poisk" military-patriotic club. The club works to perpetuate the memory of the fallen soldiers and search for the relatives of the deceased. It is the relatives and loved ones of the soldiers who provide great assistance to the club's activists in their search work, Anatoly Burdo added. -0-