Not sure if this is the right place to ask but here goes. My grandmother grew up in Ukraine and her father served in the Red Army. To this day, she has no idea what happened to him. I'm interested to know if it is possible to somehow find any archival evidence of his service. All I know is that he was drafted in 1941. The last time she saw him was later during the evacuation of Kiev. After that she never heard from him again. I guess Soviet records of casualties were not up to par back then but is there any way to find out what happened to him?
There's online database "Memorial" of all USSR citizens, who served in Soviet Army and who were killed or missed in action during WWII.
It is in russian and you would need to enter your grandpa names in russian in order to search.
Several caveats:
some russian and ukranian frequent first/last name combination may generate huge lists - e.g. Иван Петров
many casualty reports were written in haste and spelling of rare names or those with non-trivial spelling might be different from other official papers. If you don't find direct hit, try to modify - for example, Авксентий ~ Авсентий ~ Овсентий.
it is very helpful to know exact date and place of draft, date of birth (again, some reports might misstate those, so look for similar too), which unit he served, rank etc.
it is ~80% complete (last time I've heard) and there are many white spots - especially from 1941 and 1942, from encircled units with all documents lost etc. The goal is to have it as complete as possible and expand it beyond WWII.
If you need any help - please contact me.