Russian propaganda continues to hide the casualties on their side since the very first day of the war in Ukraine. Until February 27, the Russian defense ministry denied any casualties at all, then recognized some losses but didn't provide numbers.
According to the "Current Time TV" in Russian, the law in Russian Federation considers the data on the quantity of possible casualties as a state secret.
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Ukraine published its own records of approximate Russian casualties since the first day of the war. As of the end of that day, February 24, Russia had lost about 800 troops already. Also, President Zelenskyy said the Ukrainian army had lost 137 soldiers. Later on, Ukraine did not announce the exact numbers of their losses, only named those posthumously awarded the title "Hero of Ukraine".
On March 2 Russia finally announced its current losses of servicemen in Ukraine – 498 dead, 1597 injured. For comparison, the Ukrainian side claimed to have recorded over 7,000 lost Russians. The latest data provided by the Ukrainian side as of March 6 assumes over 11,000 personnel casualties among Russian invaders.
On March 6 Operational Command "North" of the Ukrainian Armed Forces published military documents, that reveal the attitude of Russian senior staff towards its troops. Junior commanders were ordered to take all identifying documents and tokens from their subordinates. According to the document, this measure is necessary to "counter the spread of false information <...> namely the information from the Ukrainian side regarding losses of the Russian Armed Forces."
The order as well includes an instruction to secretly carry out bodies of dead Russian soldiers to permanent deployment locations. The bodies then to be buried in mass graves. If the evacuation isn't possible, the commanders were told to destroy the bodies then and there.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that Russians deployed mobile cremation chambers to destroy dead soldiers' bodies. This way Russian government is trying to hide the actual casualties numbers from the public.
"No one is counting them. No one cares how many die in the shellings, in this war. You know that they [Russians] brought crematoriums with them <...> They knew in advance they were not going to show to their families, to their mothers, what happened to their children, that they died here," Zelenskyy said during a press conference for foreign media in Kyiv.
The crematoriums were also mentioned by Ben Wallace, the UK Secretary of State for Defence. On February 23, when the Russian invasion was still considered "imminent", he told the reporters that the ministry expected to see such mobile crematoriums deployed to the Ukraine-Russia border along with other vehicles of military use. The official said the defense ministry had previously seen such deployments.
"If I was a soldier and knew that my generals had so little faith in me that they followed me around the battlefield with a mobile crematorium, or I was the mother or father of a son, potentially deployed into a combat zone, and my government thought that the way to cover up losses was a mobile crematorium, I’d be deeply, deeply worried," the defense secretary told The Telegram newspaper.
Worth noting, the executive order from the Russian senior command also mentioned the Ukrainian channel in Telegram messenger called roughly "Look for yours". This channel is ruled by Ukrainian activists, it regularly publishes information regarding identified Russian troops – dead and held captive ones.
Defense Express covers the war between Ukraine and Russia, the war crimes done by Russian occupiers, and the current state of affairs on the frontlines. Russian President Vladimir Putin started an invasion despite common sense and a whole multitude of international agreements. The war has already set records for Russian losses, almost the whole world stood against this aggression from Russia, but fighting still continues. On the battlefield, on the diplomatic field, and in the information field.
Read more: Russian Prisoners of War in Ukraine: Putin Sent the Russian Military to Their Deaths
