<br /> <p>England football fans laid flowers at Volgograd’s monument to Russia’s Second World War dead ahead of England’s World Cup opener against Tunisia on June 18.</p><p>Belfast Telegraph reporter Adrian Rutherford shared a clip of the fans laying flowers at the Mamaev Kurgan memorial park’s Eternal Flame,</a> a pantheon that lists the names of more than 7,000 Russian soldiers killed during the Battle of Stalingrad, as the city was once called.</p><p>“England fans lay flowers at the eternal flame in Volgograd which honours Soviet war dead. On the wall is written (I’m told): ‘Yes, we were mere mortals, and only a few of us survived, but we all fulfilled our patriotic duty to the sacred Motherland,’” Rutherfortd wrote. Credit: Adrian Rutherford via Storyful</p><br />
