MOSCOW, May 3 (UPI) -- Russian boy scouts have found the remains of 500 soldiers killed defending Leningrad more than 60 years ago, the Itar-Tass news agency reported Monday.
The scouts "found the remains of 500 Red Army soldiers and officers" in the Novgorod region, Itar-Tass said.
"The remains will be reburied at war memorials."
The Novgorod region was an area of heavy fighting from 1941 to 1944 as Russian supply convoys sought to push supplies through to besieged Leningrad, Russia, which is today again known by its original name St. Petersburg. Over a million people died during the long siege, the worst in recorded history.
The scouts' effort is part of a nationwide drive launched by President Vladimir Putin to find the remains of hundreds of thousands of dead Russian soldiers from the war whose remains have never been properly buried. "A similar search has begun in Sakhalin's Smirnykhovsky district" on an island in the Russian Far East, Itar-Tass said.
