Across Siberia and Russia's far eastern regions, more than 120 memorials to participants in the invasion of Ukraine have been installed at a cost of at least 500 million rubles ($5.6 million) over the past three years.

Most monuments have been erected in provincial towns and villages, where the majority of Russia's fighters are being recruited from, adding to the hardship prevalent in the country's poorest regions.

One new landmark, in the village of Kara-Khaak in southern Siberia's Tuva region, has been described as "more of a monument to domestic despair and hopelessness than to war."

The memorial was first unveiled as a statue of Kara-Sal Belek. The 22-year-old soldier had lost his father at a young age, but was widely viewed as the pride of the village. He was killed in the opening weeks of the Russian invasion.

Soon after Kara-Sul's death, his brother Avyral Belek signed up with the Wagner mercenary group from prison. The older brother had been serving an eight-year sentence for murdering his stepfather, whom Avyral caught drunkenly beating his mother. After Avyral was also killed in Ukraine, the memorial to Kara-Sal was expanded to make space for a statue to his older brother.

Authorities in Ulan-Ude, the capital of the southern Republic of Buryatia, aim to erect a "heavenly yurt" to fallen soldiers of the Russian invasion. Buryat photographer Aleksander Garmayev has criticized the project for its expense amid an ongoing conflict. "To erect a monument in Ulan-Ude for 24 million rubles ($268,000) is a ridiculous folly," he said. "With critical supply problems [on the front lines] this money would clearly be put to better use buying drones and electronic warfare equipment."

According to Garmayev, soldiers in the trenches "don't care what sort of monument is being sculpted; the issue of equipment and transport is more pressing."

Local authorities in Ulan-Ude say the monument has been requested by "wounded soldiers, widows, and the mothers of fallen troops."

When a monument was erected in the Buryatia region to 15 soldiers killed in Ukraine, one wounded Wagner mercenary learned his own name was etched onto the memorial. He was forced to prove his own continued existence in court and his name was eventually erased from his town's newest landmark.

Elsewhere in Siberia, locals have pushed back against monuments to the invasion of Ukraine being placed in prominent places.

In eastern city of Chita, nearly 100 residents signed an open letter opposing the installation in the city center of a monument to Russia's "special military operation" -- the official term used by the Russian government for Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

"There are places for grief, and places for everyday life," the letter declared. "After all, we don't bury our dead under our windows, do we?"

After the Chita monument was unveiled, one of the signatories of the letter told RFE/RL's Siberia.Realities that now, "no one is criticizing it; you have to understand it's not safe."

In the Far Eastern town of Magadan, authorities also plan to directly link Russia's sacred memory of World War II to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The proposed memorial there will feature a Soviet soldier passing a banner to a participant in Moscow's attack on its western neighbor.

The monuments to Russia's invasion have been placed mostly on the outskirts of cities, and away from the country's biggest population centers, but that situation may change.

"I think that in the future we will start to see good, professional monuments on the main streets of cities," says historian Sergei Chernyshov, "especially if Russia's aggression continues."

According to Chernyshov it is "impossible to imagine," any efforts to remove the monuments, even to such a controversial war. "For this to happen, something completely revolutionary would have to take place," he says.

Another historian, who asked to remain anonymous, says that, if monuments to the invasion of Ukraine are erected in Russia's major cities, they will appear "in minimal numbers."

He added that "it's clear that it's the provinces fighting in Ukraine, while the authorities of our biggest cities are trying to ignore this war."