Russia unveils monument to Ukraine war dead outside St Petersburg

KUDROVO, Russia (Reuters) -A crowd of hundreds, including relatives of Russian troops, gathered outside St Petersburg on Friday for the unveiling of a monument to soldiers killed in Ukraine, the first such memorial erected near one of Russia's two biggest cities.

"A monument is a way of immortalizing history. Now we have a new history," said Anna Krasnova, who had come to see the statue depicting two soldiers holding guns, unveiled in Kudrovo, a commuter town of 60,000 people.

Her husband is fighting in Ukraine and her brother is listed as missing in action there, she said.

While similar monuments have been erected in Russia's provinces, the memorial is the first of its kind in the vicinity of Moscow or St Petersburg.

"The most valuable thing our people have is memory," the regional governor, Alexander Drozdenko, said at the dedication ceremony. "Our cause is just, the enemy will be defeated and victory will be ours."

The monument's inscription, on a pillar above the figures, contains no date or mention of where the fighting it honours took place. It reads only: "To the heroes of the SMO", an abbreviation for Special Military Operation, the Kremlin's official term for the conflict.

The monument would serve as a reminder to young people of how they should serve their country, said another spectator, Kirill Drantsov.

"We will not need to explain why and how to love the Motherland and how to defend it."

(Reporting by Reuters in Kudrovo; Writing by Lucy Papachristou)

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