In Luchegorsk I had met this marine guy who worked for the 155 Naval Brigade in Vladivostok. We had a few beers and some food and it was really nice to talk to him. His English was quite good.
After this meeting I never had contact with him again. And then recently I read that the 155 Naval Brigade was involved in the “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine. Now I got curious. Did this marine guy also go to Ukraine?
I had one photo of him and me at the restaurant table, so I uploaded this photo to a website named facecheck.id that does facial recognition. You never know.
And low and behold: the website came back with a list of hits and the number one hit was a man with a beret.
I checked the emblem on the beret and bingo, 155 Naval Brigade. So now we have a no. 1 hit, of a man with a beret, and the military unit matches. And the age also matches, roughly. Must be him!
The match pointed to a website poteru.net where I could find more info about him. Poteru.net turned out to be a website that lists all Russian casualties of the SMO or Ukraine war. Today (early 2026) the counter is at 186.000.
His name was Igor Chestnyh, he was a member of the 155 Naval Brigade from Vladivostok, and he had died on 6th March 2022 near Kiev, aged 35. He was in a unit of about 600 men and this unit was wiped out by the Ukrainians, about 300 died.
Then I checked my phone, was he maybe in my phone? And yes, he was! While in the restaurant I must have put his contacts in my phone, I even had his phone number and email address.
Poteru.net writes:
Yegor Aleksandrovich Chestny was born on January 14, 1987 in the village of Novopokrovka of the Primorsky Territory.
After graduation, he studied at the Admiral G. Maritime State University. I. Nevelsky, from where in 2005 was called up for military service in the 14th separate guards brigade of special purpose in the city of Ussuriysk.
Having passed to service under the contract, he served in the airborne assault battalion of the 155th separate Guards Order of Zhukov to the Marine Corps of the Pacific Fleet.
The special military operation was his third military mission. Senior sergeant Yegor Honestkh took the last fight on March 6, 2022 in the Kiev region.*
The daughter that I had seen him walking with in Luchegorsk must have been about 13 years old when he died.