Vladimir Putin has repeatedly promised that no 18-year-olds called up to serve Russia will be sent to fight in Ukraine, but a BBC Russian investigation has found at least 245 soldiers of that age have been killed there in the past two years.
New government rules mean teenagers fresh out of school have been able to bypass military service and go straight into the regular army as contract soldiers.
They may make up only a fraction of Russian losses, but cash bonuses and patriotic propaganda have made signing up an attractive choice.
Alexander Petlinsky enlisted two weeks after his 18th birthday.
He was killed in Ukraine just 20 days later: one of hundreds of thousands of soldiers killed in Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine which has also claimed the lives of at least 13,500 Ukrainian civilians since Putin launched the invasion in February 2022.
