PHILADELPHIA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st May, 2019) Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov paid tribute on Friday to sailors of the Russian Imperial Navy buried in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Antonov laid flowers at the graves of the sailors, who died during Russian Imperial Navy expeditions in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Russian diplomats and representatives from the Russian Defense Attache's Office took part in the commemorative ceremony at the Glenwood Memorial Gardens cemetery.
The graves of 10 Russian Imperial Navy sailors have been found at the cemetery, Yelena Gritsenko, acting chief of the Washington office of the US-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs, told Sputnik.
"In the 19th century, there were three American expeditions of the Russian imperial fleet ... In this cemetery, we managed to find the graves of several sailors of the expedition of Captain [Leonid] Semechkin in 1878," Gritsenko said.
Semechkin, tasked with purchasing US cruisers for the Russian Imperial Navy, came to Philadelphia to buy civilian ships, which were later re-outfitted at the Philadelphia shipyards. One of the ships was the cruiser Africa, and four sailors from the vessel are buried at the cemetery, Gritsenko added.
"Later, the battleship Retvizan and the cruiser Varyag were built in Philadelphia on the order of the Russian government for the Russian imperial fleet at the shipyards of William Crump. Several sailors from the crew of these warships died from diseases at a hospital in Philadelphia, and were buried at this cemetery," Gritsenko explained.
She noted that the graves of the Russian sailors were found by a Representative Office�of the Russian Ministry of Defense. American researchers from the Philadelphia Naval Museum of Independence helped with archival searches.
In May 2018, the first two tombstones were erected. Since then, seven of the sailors have been identified - Mikhail Derdyuk, Efim Larionov, Klimenti Protsenko, Trifon Menshikov, Ivan Matveyev, Micah Popov, Pavel Panteleyev - and monuments erected at their burial sites.
