Man arrested for cooking BBQ over eternal flame for fallen soldiers

A man has reportedly been arrested after he was caught using an eternal flame monument to Russian soldiers who died in the Second World War as a barbecue.

A video shared on Russian social media on Thursday showed the unidentified older man crouching down and holding a skewer of meat over the ever-burning fire in the Caspian Sea town of Derbent.

“No need for coal,” the man says to someone else off camera with a grin as he squatted amid roses scattered at the feet of a statue of a grieving mother in the town’s park dedicated to “military glory”.

But according to the state-run TASS news agency, officials in Derbent have now detained the man and are preparing administrative charges against him.