Russia comes up with new ways to cover up its losses in Ukraine

Upon a request from the Russian Defence Ministry, the government of the Republic of Khakassia, a federal subject of the Russian Federation, has ceased publishing obituaries concerning soldiers killed in Ukraine to diminish the Russian army’s death count.

Source: Sibir.Realii (Siberia Reality), a Radio Liberty project, citing sources in the Khakassian government

Details: A source told journalists that the Khakassian government’s press service no longer publishes information about soldiers and Wagner Group mercenaries killed in Ukraine because independent Russia media are using this information to establish the Russian army’s death count.

On 26 April 2023, the Khakassian government published the last obituary for a soldier killed in Ukraine – Dmitry Ivanov, a Supreme Council representative who fought with the Wagner Group near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.

There is a large discrepancy between open-source data and the information provided by the Russian Defence Ministry, which has not disclosed Russia’s total losses since September 2022. At the time, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu claimed that only 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, BBC Russia and Mediazona journalists reported, based on open-source data, that over 25,000 Russian soldiers had been killed. Journalists believe that the most conservative estimates of Russia’s losses in Ukraine indicate 50,000 soldiers had been killed, while the total number of military personnel who can no longer fight due to injury or who have been killed is at least 225,000.

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