A representative of a disappearing people died in the war — the young man lived only 18 years
A representative of a small-numbered people — the Tofalars — died in the war, report "Baikal People".
The farewell ceremony for Andrei Khalyamoyev took place on January 8, 2026, in Nizhneudinsk, Irkutsk Oblast. The young man died in combat three months before the funeral — on September 21, 2025. He turned 18 on August 2.
According to the authors of the obituary, Private Andrei Khalyamoyev went to war as a volunteer — he signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. He was a rifleman-sapper in an assault company's capture squad.
In comments to the obituary, residents of the Nizhneudinsk district write that the deceased was from Tofalaria — a hard-to-reach area in the Irkutsk Oblast. A disappearing people — the Tofalars — live there. For most of the year, the villages of mountainous Tofalaria can only be reached by helicopter.
A 2016 study by ethnographer Viktor Krivonogov on the Tofalars mentions the last reindeer herders of this area — the Khalyamoyev brothers from Verkhnyaya Gutara. Apparently, the deceased was from their family.
In his scientific work, researcher Krivonogov also provides the exact number of Tofalars in the ethnic territory in 2015. There were 663 people. Of these, children aged 5-9 years numbered only 69 people. Andrei Khalyamoyev was 8 years old at the time of the study.
Khalyamoyev became the youngest casualty of the war on the list maintained by "Baikal People". He lived for 18 years and 49 days.
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