Former Russian footballer Alexey Bugaev was 43 years old, he died fighting in Ukraine. From the beginning of the twentieth century to today there have been many names on the bloody altar of the homeland
The footballer who dies in the war is a discordant piece of news among the many badly arranged ones in the day’s scroll; it is a branch that breaks with a sinister noise and causes silence to fall – even just for a moment – in the forest of our heart. Former Russian footballer Alexey Bugaev died in Ukraine, died fighting. He was 43 years old, Torpedo Moscow was the team that had marked his career, and he only made 7 appearances for the national team. In 2004 he was included in Russia’s squad for the European Championship which was held in Portugal that year. He had stopped playing football when he was still thirty years old. For a while Bugayev was lost. He had recently been sentenced to nine and a half years in prison: he was a drug trafficker, having in fact tried to sell five hundred grams of methylephedrine. Conscription into the Russian army had been voluntary, a shrewd move to avoid prison.