A FORMER Euros football star has been killed fighting in Ukraine.
Aleksei Bugayev, 43, signed up to battle for Putin after being handed a nine-and-a-half-year jail sentence for drug trafficking.
Bugayev was previously a former member of Russia‘s national football team.
He played two matches for the Russian national team in the 2004 European championship and also played for Moscow sides Torpedo and Lokomotiv as well as other provincial sides.
The star ended his career in 2010 at the age of 29.
In September, Bugayev was sentenced by a court in southern Russia to nine and a half years in prison on drug trafficking charges.
He later declared his intention to join Putin’s war in Ukraine.
But on Sunday, Bugayev was killed in battle.
His father Ivan Bugayev told the Sport24 news outlet: “Unfortunately, the news about Aleksei’s death is true. It happened today.”
Intense fighting had made it impossible to retrieve Bugayev’s body for burial, his agent said.
Desperate Putin has been actively recruiting in prisons to keep his meat-grinder war churning.
In October, ruthless Vlad signed a fresh bill enabling rapists and murderers to be let off before trial if they instead go and fight in Ukraine.
His move was aimed at supporting Russia’s increasing losses in Ukraine as the government struggles to attract fighters.
Shameless Putin assumed he would be able to sweep into Ukraine and take Kyiv within days when he ordered his troops over the border.
But almost three years on, the Russian dictator has suffered tremendous losses on the frontline.
Putin is thought to have lost tens of thousands of troops – with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky putting the figure at almost 200,000.
In an update earlier this month, he claimed 198,000 Russian soldiers had been killed, and a further 550,000 wounded.
