Volunteers and military, who gathered at World War II veterans' cemetery in the town of Semei in eastern Kazakhstan on the eve of the Victory Day celebrations were shocked to see the cemetery vandalized.
"Almost all crosses were ripped off the graves, apparently to be handed over as scrap metal, leaving deep dents on the gravestones," an activist, Vice President of the Semipalatinsk Association of Noncommercial Organizations Nikolay Isayev told Interfax on Friday.
"The cemetery was closed a long time ago and it has remained unattended since then. It is a place where those who died in hospitals of wounds sustained during the war, were buried," Isayev said.
Local police are working to track down the vandals.