HIS body lies somewhere on the frontline in Ukraine.
A former star footballer, now one of the countless casualties of Vladimir Putin’s brutal meat-grinder war.
Twenty years ago Aleksei Bugayev was playing against footballing icons like Cristiano Ronaldo and Luis Figo at the Euros.
He had achieved what millions could only ever dream of; football stardom and a place on a world stage to show off his skills.
But when his career ended prematurely in 2010 at the age of 29, Bugayev’s life would begin to spiral out of control.
Gripped by poverty, debt, alcoholism and drug dealing, he was left a dishevelled ghost of his former life.
It would eventually lead him into a desperate decision – one which would seal a terrible fate in the merciless war in Ukraine.
Yesterday Bugayev’s dad confirmed to Russian media that his 43-year-old son had been killed in Ukraine as part of Putin’s “special military operation”.
Ivan Bugayev said his son’s body could not be recovered due to “active fighting”.
“Now my son’s body is lying somewhere,” he said.
Bugayev’s fall into the abyss was a tragedy which friends and fellow players had seen develop when he was just in his 20s.
Born in Moscow at the height of the Cold War in 1981, Bugayev was able to sign for one of the city’s footballing giants, Torpedo Moscow, known as the Car Factory Workers.
Russian footballing legend Valery Petrakov, who managed Bugayev, said he was as a naturally gifted young player; “superbly equipped technically” and with “an excellent view of the field”.
“He could do everything on the field,” he added. “He had speed, a pass, a shot, positioning, coordination, jumping ability… and phenomenal health, too. He was a devil of a player.”
Despite being just 5ft 9in, not tall for a centre-back, Bugayev secured a place in the national squad for the Euro 2004 championships held in Portugal.
At the Estadio do Benfica in front of 50,000 fans, and millions watching on TV around the world, Bugayev started the game against eventual finalists Portugal.
The tournament hosts featured some the world’s greatest players, Luis Figo, Deco and Rui Costa.
A young Cristiano Ronaldo, then just 19, came on as a sub during the game which Portugal won, 2-0.
A picture from the match shows a dejected Bugayev as striker Rui Costa celebrates Portugal’s second goal.
The tournament would mark the breathtaking emergence of Ronaldo at the start if his astonishing rise to a footballing great.
But as Ronaldo was bursting onto the world football scene, Bugayev’s Euro appearances would mark a premature epoch for such a young player.
He would be capped seven times for Russia, but he was also starting to display the troubling personal demons which would haunt him through the rest of his life.
After his international appearances, Bugayev was transferred for $2m to Moscow rivals Lokomotiv.
But he failed to secure a regular place in the team and the quiet and reserved young man started drinking.
Another former team-mate Igor Semshov told Russian sports reporter Artem Lokalov that Bugayev’s career began to unravel when he moved to Locomotiv and he lost the personal support of his Torpedo team-mates.
He added: “Bugayev could break the rules, but we put these moments aside and looked at him as someone the team needed.
“If we had managed to spend a career with him in the same club, we would not have let him give up everything and go downhill.
“But we all moved to other clubs, where everyone was on their own. At Torpedo, we could shower (him) with care or put pressure on him at the right moment, but everyone went their separate ways.”
Transferred to Siberian team Tom Tomsk in 2006, Bugayev quickly found himself in trouble, including disappearing at a beer festival in Moscow.
Speaking to Russian media, his former manager Petrakov told Russian media: “It’s a shame that Bugayev drowned his talent in alcohol.
“He lasted three or four months, and then everything started all over again.”
“It all ended with a riot at a training camp in Turkey. He smashed a shop window. The next day, Bugayev’s contract was terminated.”
Bugayev was handed a lifeline by the newly formed FC Krasnodar, playing 20 matches before parting company with the club.
At the age of 29, he would never play professional football again.
Another former coach Nurbiy Khakunov described how at Krasnodar the club “tried to help” the player as his personal life deteriorated.
He added: “It didn’t work to restart his career. Bugayev decided to go down a non-sports path. It’s no secret that he had problems with alcohol.
“We fought as best we could, but it didn’t work. He came to Krasnodar already with problems and hardly played.
“I feel sorry for him, because he could have played (more games) for the national team, but he went down such a bad path. That’s for sure. He had a very good brain, he was very strong in one-on-one combat.”
Bugayev, who insisted later that he quit football to spend more time with his family, slipped into obscurity, only reemerging in 2015 when he agreed to an interview about his playing career.
Then he was working collecting waste paper and transporting cargo around Russia from a run down home in the Moscow suburb of Chekhov.
He said he and his friend made the equivalent of 1p for every kilo of paper they found.
There he admitted to Lokalov that he had been drinking through his playing days but looking back on his career said “Do I regret anything? Never and for nothing.”
Bugayev’s life would continue to disintegrate however.
Seven years later in October 2023 he was arrested for drug smuggling.
He admitted to cops that he “responded to an advert for a job as a drug courier” in a bid to pay off 70,000 roubles of debt – then the equivalent of about £500.
Bugayev claimed he had been told to distribute half a kilo of mephedrone, or M-Cat, but was caught. He faced 20-years in prison.
After a year on remand, in September a court in Krasnodar sentenced Bugayev to 9 and-a-half years in a maximum security penal colony.
It was then he was offered a deal that would seal his tragic fate.
Those convicted of serious crimes in Russia are now being lured into the military in a desperate bid by Putin to shore up immense losses in his war against Ukraine.
Killers, rapists and drug dealers are offered pardons – even before their trials – if they agree to military service and being sent to the front.
Facing almost a decade in a dreaded Russian penal colony, Bugayev took the gamble and signed a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry.
He was then quickly sent to Russia’s North Military District and soon, after the most basic military training, to the frontline in Ukraine.
There he joined the battered, ill-trained and ill-equipped legions of convicts, many in their 40s, 50s and 60s, being used as cannon fodder to try to secure pitiful yards of gains against Ukraine’s highly trained troops, tanks, killer drones, artillery and trenches.
The news of Bugayev’s fate came first from his lawyer Anton Smirnov who told the Russian website Sports.ru that the former player had been killed in action at the front.
He added: “Due to the fighting there is no way to pull out the body yet.”
“Unfortunately, the news of Aleksei’s death is true,” his dad later said. “How did it happen? And how are they killed during the military operations, I do not know.”
Read the full article here
