Convicted Commander of Arctic troops killed
Before he went to war, Yaroslav Kurcheev served in Sputnik, the naval infantry base located near the border to Norway and Finland.
“With grief we inform that our fellow soldier and inhabitant of Sputnik Yaroslav Sergeevich Kurcheev has died on the territory of the special military operation,” a social media post from the closed military town reads. “He served many years in the 61st Naval Infantry Brigade. Everyone remembers him as a kind and attentive officer,” the VK page adds. Kurcheev was commander of Northern Fleet troops fighting on occupied Ukrainian land. He and his men are believed to have been deployed along the Dnepr river delta.
The 29 years old military man had the rang of captain. On occupied Ukrainian lands he fought under the call sign “Voskhod” (Sunrise) for the 200th Motorised Rifle Brigade. In a video, he is referred to as commander of a battalion. Yaroslav Kurcheev was married and father of three young boys. Like many military families, the Kurcheev boys were active in military-patriotic youth activities.
This summer, the oldest of the boys attended Artek, the summer camp site run by the Ministry of Defence. Captain Kurcheev was reported killed in late October. On her social media page, his wife Yekaterina expresses her sorrow by posting war videos on her VK page. “For Voskhod,” fellow soldiers are seen writing on shells and missiles before they fire them against Ukrainian targets. “It's heartbreaking,” the young woman writes about the salutes from the comrades-in-arms.
Only few months ago, the family enjoyed vacation on the Black Sea coast, and Yekaterina posted dozens of photos of smiling family members in a lush and relaxed surrounding. Captain Kurcheev wore a smart summer dress and smiled to camera together with his wife and sons. Shortly later, he returned to the war of aggression and the killing of Ukrainians. Kurcheev might not have been a “kind and attentive officer,” as described by the social media page in Sputnik. In a video posted by Russian state propaganda channel RT, the commander is seen in a uniform marked with the badge of Varyag, a militant group that praises war.
On his helmet, he had a piece of the St.George ribbon, the Russian war symbol. Back in the Russian north, Yaroslav Kurcheev in 2019 got a fine for violence against a soldier. According to the verdict from the military court in Zaozersk, Kurcheev had beaten and humiliated one of this subordinate soldiers. He was acquitted for the worst accusations, but still given a 30,000 rubles fine. Captain Kurcheev is one of several hundred soldiers from the two brigades in the far northern Pechenga area that have been killed in Ukraine.
Less than one year after the start of the full-scale war, a Norwegian intelligence report claimed that the 61st Naval Infantry Brigade and the 200th Motorised Rifle Brigade har been reduced to one fifth of their former capacity. Kurcheev is only one of many leading military men from the north Russian brigades that have vanished. Already in the early days of the full-scale onslaught, commander of the 200th Motorised Rifle Brigade Denis Kurilo was reported killed. Later, Vladimir Zavadsky, the general that was in charge of several of the most powerful military units in the Kola Peninsula, was killed. He was reportedly killed by a mine on the 28th of November 2023 near Izyum in occupied parts of Kharkiv region.
