lit a candle 9h agoI just read an article last week about the last WWII veterans still alive around the world and his name was in it. 99 years old. Drove a bus for decades after fighting on the Belorussian front. Didn't expect to see him in the news again so soon.
Their story
Anton Semyonovich Shalnov was a Soviet World War II veteran who lived for most of his long life in Kara-Balta, a city in the Chuy Region of northern Kyrgyzstan. By the time of his death he was one of the last surviving men in the city to have served in…
Anton Semyonovich Shalnov was a Soviet World War II veteran who lived for most of his long life in Kara-Balta, a city in the Chuy Region of northern Kyrgyzstan. By the time of his death he was one of the last surviving men in the city to have served in what Russian-speaking countries call the Great Patriotic War, and he was honoured each year by local authorities as a living link to that generation.
He was born on 11 August 1927 in the village of Tserkovina in the Usvyatsky district of Smolensk Region, Russia. He was still a boy when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, and the Smolensk region was among the areas occupied and fought over in the early years of the war.
Shalnov was called up for military service in 1944, aged about 17. After training in a training battalion he took part in combat with tank forces on the Belorussian Front during the final phase of the war. Kyrgyzstani reports say he received several awards for courage, including the medal "For the Victory over Japan" and the Medal of Zhukov.
After the war he moved to Kara-Balta, where he worked as a driver at the city motor depot. He remained in the city for the rest of his life, through the end of the Soviet Union and the decades of Kyrgyz independence. Local officials visited him to offer congratulations on Victory Day each 9 May, and in 2025 the city listed him among its last three living war veterans when it arranged repairs to veterans' homes and annual payments from the municipal budget.
Shalnov died on the evening of 11 November 2026 in Kara-Balta, in his hundredth year, at the age of 99. His death was confirmed by close relatives and reported by the local outlet Turmush, then by AKIpress and other Kyrgyzstani media. No cause of death was made public. Reports noted that his death left Kara-Balta with only one surviving veteran of the war and one former concentration camp prisoner.
He is remembered in Kara-Balta as a quiet, dependable member of the community whose working life after the war was spent driving the city's vehicles, and whose wartime service made him one of the final witnesses of the Second World War in Kyrgyzstan.
Biography adapted from News reports: Turmush, AKIpress, Open.kg, Report.kg.
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1by People Forever
same, I think it was the same piece, Kara-Balta stuck with me