Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Rodionov (; 23 May 1977 – 23 May 1996) was a Russian soldier who was taken prisoner of war by Chechen rebels in the First Chechen War and later executed in captivity. He has gained much admiration throughout Russia for the circumstances of his death, as his execution allegedly resulted from his refusal to convert to Islam and defect to the enemy side. Despite widespread popular veneration he has not been glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church as a New Martyr due to lack of evidence about his death. Still, icons depicting him are installed in many churches across Russia, in St. Valery church in Chișinău, in a church of Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute in Ukraine, and in the Greek Orthodox Church of St. George in Frankfurt in Germany. Early life Yevgeny Rodionov was born on 23 May 1977 in the village of Chibirley, Kuznetsky District, Penza Oblast, to Lyubov Vasiliyevna and Aleksandr Konstantinovich Rodionov. His father was a carpenter and furniture maker, who died a week after his son's death. His mother had a degree in furniture technologies. In 1978, he was baptized as a Russian Orthodox at the age of one year, but wore no pectoral cross until the first one was given to him in 1988 or 1989, while attending church together with his grandmother. His mother disapproved, but Yevgeny never removed the cross; later he began wearing it with a small string instead of the original chain. After finishing ninth grade at a rural school of Kurilovo in Moscow Oblast, he began to work at a furniture factory and trained to be a driver. Military service and capture Though Rodionov aspired to be a cook, he was conscripted into the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on 25 June 1995. His training took place in 2631 Military Unit of Russian Border Troops in Ozersk, Kaliningrad Oblast. On 10 July 1995, he took the military oath. Rodionov was deployed to Chechnya, where he served in the Russian army's border troops as an RPG operator at the 3rd border outpost of the 3rd Motorised Manoeuvre Group of the 479th Border Troops Special Operations Unit (No. 3807). On 13 January 1996, Rodionov was deployed to the Caucasus Special Border District, serving in the Nazran Border Unit (No. 2094). A month later, on 14 February 1996, accompanied by privates Andrey Trusov, Igor Yakovlev, and Alexander Zheleznov, he went to