The great-grandson of bushy-browed Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev has reportedly been captured by Ukrainian forces while fighting for Russian President Vladimir Putin in the ongoing war.
Anton Milaev, the adopted grandson of Brezhnev’s daughter, lost contact with his family in November after joining Russia’s military last fall as an elite combat engineer to fight in Ukraine, local media reported.
Months later, the 45-year-old’s loved ones were told he was being held as a prisoner in a de-occupied area of Ukraine’s Kherson region, according to Russian Telegram channel Baza, the BBC reported.
A similar Telegram post by Serhiy Sternenko, adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister, was shared Thursday.
The exact circumstances of his capture – and any chance of a future prison swap – remain unknown.
Milaev last posted photos of himself on Russian social media platform VKontakte in January 2025, wearing his military uniform and sporting the call sign “Udacha.”
“This history of the family of the General Secretary… after the collapse of the Soviet Union has taken on a paradoxical development,” a post on Russian social media said.
Brezhnev ran the Soviet Union as General Secretary of the Communist party from 1964 until his death in 1982.
His long reign was marred by bureaucratic gridlock and rising corruption, while he clung to power even as his health deteriorated, leaving the system bogged down in dysfunction in his final years.
His death ended an era of political stagnation and ushered in rapid leadership change in the Soviet Union, which saw three leaders in three years — and ended with the collapse of the communist nation.
Brezhnev, unlike his fearsome predecessors Nikita Khrushchev and Joseph Stalin, was seen as more of a apparatchik than a bellicose rival by the US.
He became known for his overlarge eyebrows, rotund frame and chest full of medals.