Bugajev represented Russia's national football team on seven occasions. Among other things, he was part of the Russian team during the European Championship 2004 and played two of the matches there.
At club level, the centre-back represented, among others, the big clubs Lokomotiv Moscow, Torpedo Moscow, and Krasnodar.
In 2010, he ended his football career. Bugajev was recruited to the Russian military after being sentenced to nine and a half years in prison for attempting to smuggle drugs.
Bugajev was 43 years old.
Bugajev is not the first athlete whose life has ended in the war.
Before this summer's Olympic Games in Paris, it was reported that 487 Ukrainian athletes had been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The weightlifter and former Olympic fourth-place finisher Oleksandr Pielieshenko, the kickboxer and medalist in the Youth Olympic Games Maksym Galinitjev, and the 19-year-old biathlon talent Jevhen Malysjev are some of the Ukrainian athletes who have been killed in the war.
