Twin Russian brother, 29, died side-by-side

In the latest in a spate of heavy losses for Moscow, twin Russian brothers were slain on the same day while fighting in Ukraine.

Sergeants Alexei and Anton Vorobyov, both 29, were killed three weeks after Moscow’s forces invaded Ukraine on February 24.

The signalmen of the 150th Rifle Division, a World War II-era regiment that was reconstituted in 2013, were known as the Vorobyovs. In the early weeks of the conflict, it was one of several Russian battalions that suffered high fatalities.

The brothers were laid to rest in coffins draped with Russian flags in Novocherkassk on Tuesday, one of the hundreds of burials taking place around Russia. Both brothers left behind partners, one of whom is expecting.

‘Anton would tell me how much he enjoyed the service,’ a childhood friend, Anastasia Novikova, told the Moscow Times. ‘I have a lot of memories of Anton, and they’re all nice recollections. In 19 years, we never had a fight.’

Russian army casualties rise to 15,000

In the five-week war, Moscow’s military have sustained enormous losses, with NATO estimating that between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian soldiers have died. According to Ukraine, up to 17,000 people have been dead.

Meanwhile, as part of the annual spring military conscription, which runs from April 1 to July 15, Putin ordered 134,500 new conscripts aged 18 to 27 to join his army.

It comes as Ukrainian forces retook the Hostomel airbase on the outskirts of Kyiv on Thursday, where violent combat erupted in the early days of the conflict, as Russia continues to withdraw some of its forces.

At least eight colonels and several more high-ranking officers have died in Russia, including brigade commander Colonel Yuri Medvedev, who was killed by his own mutinous troops.

Colonel Nikolay Ovcharenko, the chief of the Western Military District engineer soldiers, was murdered in an ambush by a pontoon bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River, which killed a total of 18 Russians.

Colonel Alexei Sharov, commander of the Russian Marines’ 810th Guards Separate Order of Zhukov Brigade, was murdered last week in Mariupol.

Colonel Sergei Sukharev of the 331st Guards Parachute Assault Regiment from Kostroma was reportedly ‘liquidated’ in battle earlier this month, according to Ukraine.

‘Commander of the Kostroma Airborne Regiment, Colonel Sergei Sukharev… got lost in the ‘[military] exercises’, but returned home the right way,’ said the Ukrainian statement.

According to the allegation, his deputy Major Sergei Krylov was also killed.

Colonel Andrei Zakharov was killed in an ambush near Kyiv in the early days of the war, while Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky, the commander of air assault troops, died in Ukraine’s south.

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