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They are growing almost endlessly: Russian cemeteries that need space for Putin’s fallen troops. Satellite images make the horror clear.
Stavropol – Russia has caused the great death with its war of aggression Ukraine carried; and took it home again. Dramatic stories keep coming from the country where the bloody war brought indescribable suffering to hundreds of thousands of people.
Since the troops attacked Vladimir Putin’s and the Ukraine war, which has now lasted two years, cemeteries everywhere are bursting at the seams to accommodate the many new dead. They are expanding in Ukraine as well as in Russia itself, like now Business Insider reported. The dead are often visited, she wrote taz over a burial ground Kyiv. The burial grounds now seem to be eating up so much land that individuals are in danger of losing their identity in the mass deaths and their relatives will never know who is laid to rest where.
Final rest: Russian fallen soldiers buried at home
The magazine relies on the satellite service Maxar – according to their satellite images, the areas of existing cemeteries in Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine or on the territory of Russia have been enormously expanded; sometimes double. This applies, for example, to the Bogorodskoye cemetery near the city of Ryazan in Russia; the Business Insider compares Maxar images spanning a period from late October 2021 to mid-April 2023. Maxar associates this cemetery with the 106th Russian Guards Airborne Division. This unit is believed to have played a key role in the Russian operations in the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut; with the corresponding losses.
In parallel to the satellite images that have now been published, various figures about victims of the Ukraine war are currently being published again, especially reports of casualties among soldiers – on February 24th the war in Ukraine marked the second anniversary; Science unanimously argues that there is no end in sight to the Ukraine war. For now. “The battle will continue to simmer for a long time,” said the German military historian Sönke Neitzel recently, using the image of a simmering pot on a low flame. However, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine recently flared up in the city of Avdiivka – Vladimir Putin has now conquered the city. Apparently at a shockingly high price – that is currently confirmed Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Estimated interim status: More than 300,000 soldiers lost on the Russian side
At the end of January this year, according to the paper, James Heappey, Minister of State for the British Armed Forces, stated in a written answer to a parliamentary question that there were more than 350,000 dead and injured on the Russian side. The New York Times had written, citing the US government, that 120,000 Russian soldiers were killed and 170,000 to 180,000 injured. The Ukrainian army recently estimated that it had killed or disabled more than 405,000 Russian soldiers during the invasion. However, statisticians consider this number to be exaggerated and rather politically charged.
People in Europe are pushing for a negotiated solution
According to a recent survey, many people in Europe are pessimistic about Ukraine’s chances of victory against Russia because of the ongoing losses. Again European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, only ten percent of those surveyed in the survey carried out on behalf of the think tank believe that Ukraine will win. Twice as many, however, expect a Russian victory. The largest group – 37 percent – is convinced that an end to the war will be achieved through a negotiated solution. 41 percent of survey participants would like Europe to pressure Ukraine to negotiate with Russia. According to the information, more than 17,000 adults in twelve EU countries were interviewed for the survey in January 2024, including Germany, France, Poland and Sweden.
Source: Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk
Maxar’s analysts draw conclusions from their observations of regionally growing cemeteries about the losses of specific units because they suspect that the soldiers would be buried near their home garrisons: Maxar, for example, provides images of the cemetery in the town of Mikhailovsk near Stavropol in Russia and Blyzhnje in the Crimea – according to Maxar, fallen soldiers from the 7th Guards Air Assault Division are buried in both cemeteries.
Michael Zinkanell, director of the Austria Institute for European and Security Policy (AIES)warned the Tagesschau Dealing with the presented figures and supposed facts as soberly as possible. In his opinion, it was simply impossible to collect reliable data due to the confusion of the events on site. This means that the question of the plausibility of troop movements can only be answered hypothetically and the precise quantification of the losses – both in terms of personnel and material – is not possible from either side, says Zinkanell. As long as the fighting continues, the numbers will primarily be published for a specific purpose.
Frightening suspicion: fallen Russians are being burned by their own troops
At the end of last year, however, there was a particularly critical assessment of the number of casualties Kyiv Independent suggested and thus partially contradicts Maxar’s thesis: In order to hide losses, Russian armed forces are said to have burned dead soldiers in occupied Ukrainian areas instead of transporting their bodies to Russia – the Kyiv Independent had referred to the Deputy Ukrainian Defense Minister Hanna Maljar. According to Maljar, for example, near the occupied town of Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia region, dead Russian soldiers were being cremated, as she said, “almost continuously.” Residents could have noticed the characteristic acrid smoke over a longer period of time.
Since the beginning of the fighting there have been repeated reports of graves on Ukrainian territory. The Austrian colonel and military observer Markus Reisner had already stated early on Editorial Network Germany (RND) speculates that combatants outside of the regular Russian armed forces are buried there. “It is most likely that these were killed fighters from the Wagner group, as they often no longer have any relatives in their homeland or have broken with their families and therefore remain in Ukraine,” said Reisner RND. As far as he knows, members of the Russian army are actually usually transferred to Russia. However, he considers it unlikely that fallen Ukrainians would be buried in individual graves. “Killed Ukrainian soldiers are usually buried in massed pits by the Russians and not buried in such individual graves.”