In its war against Ukraine, the Russian army is suffering unprecedented losses. In the wake of this, Putin’s regime is inventing different ways to conceal the true number of soldiers killed in action and dispose of their bodies.
The Russian army is suffering more and more losses every day. According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as of the morning of March 31, Russia’s death toll stood at over 17,000. Meanwhile, the Russian leadership is in no rush to recognise their losses, and is deliberately under-reporting the numbers. According to the Russian defense ministry, the Ukrainian reports on Russian losses are exaggerated tenfold.
The bodies of Russian soldiers who died in Ukraine are being delivered en masse to Belarus, Crimea, and across the Russian regions bordering Ukraine. Local hospitals in those areas have long been overcrowded with the Russian wounded, while morgue capacities are insufficient to receive more bodies, so mobile crematoriums have been deployed to incinerate the Russian soldiers’ bodies. This is a way of applying the old playbook of “no body – no official loss to account for.”
Due to the insufficient number of mobile crematoriums, the bodies are now being disposed of even in Rostov’s industrial smelting furnaces. Mobile crematoria and smelting furnaces are used in order to prevent the bodies fro being handed to the dead soldiers’ relatives, to avoid paying compensation and to hide the real losses in the war.
The Russian soldiers who died in the first days of the war were buried only in March. Every day, hundreds of soldiers who fought and were killed in Ukraine are buried in different regions of Russia.
The Russian leadership conceals the true death toll. Often, information about troops killed in action is concealed, so it can only be found in the regional media or across social media. Often, the bodies are delivered to their families in sealed coffins, without any information provided on the exact date and place of death.
Most of the relatives of the dead Russian troops remain silent about what happened to their sons, husbands, brothers. Almost none of the relatives apply to the Society of Soldiers’ Mothers NGO for support.
Russian Officials tend to turn the vigil for the fallen soldiers into a “patriotic event.” They say that these men were devoted to their homeland and died for it. The harsh reality is that they died for Putin’s criminal regime, which sent them to another country only to be slaughtered.
None of the relatives and friends of the deceased do anything to resist the bloody regime. A few Russians are cursing the war unleashed by Putin, feeling sorry for the young guys who died for no reason. But, the “army” of ultra-patriots is trying to blot out any dissenting opinions.
Many relatives are not even aware of the date of their loved one’s death. The Russians are outraged that the young, inexperienced conscripts were sent to the war. Judging by the age of the killed soldiers, many had only recently signed up. Russia’s leadership asserts that in Ukraine, it is only contracted servicemen who take part in hostilities, but this is just untrue.
