The heads of six regions of Russia have stopped publishing military obituaries

The Kremlin recommended the heads of Russian regions not to publish obituaries of local residents who died in the war in Ukraine, reports the “Vyorstka” publication with reference to anonymous sources in the State Duma.

The journalists claim that they also received confirmation of this information from representatives of the authorities of Buryatia, Tyva, Vologda region and three more regions where the losses were “particularly high”, but which were not mentioned in the “Vyorstka” material.

The reason for the recommendations, according to media sources, is that the publication of obituaries disturbs Russians, and the independent press uses them to calculate the total number of casualties of the Russian army.

An earlier edition of Sibir.Realii reported that the authorities of Khakassia had received a recommendation from the Ministry of Defense not to publish obituaries of those killed in Ukraine. The mass media noted that the last obituary of a soldier from the republic was published at the end of April.

“Vyorstka” notes that the governor of the Vologda region, Oleg Kuvshinnikov, last commented on the death of a native of the region he leads in February. Vladyslav Khovalyg, the leader of Tyva, and Aleksey Tsydenov, the head of Buryatia, stopped mentioning the dead, while both regularly write about the so-called “special military operation” in their social networks. It is Tyva, along with Buryatia, according to the independent press, that lead in the number of military casualties in Ukraine in relation to the number of male population.

• Since the beginning of the war, journalists from the Russian Service of the BBC and Mediazon regularly publish figures for the losses of the Russian army in Ukraine. We are talking only about confirmed cases of the death of servicemen, which got into official and open sources. By mid-June of this year, journalists managed to confirm the death of 25,528 Russian soldiers, 2,498 of whom were mobilized. The media emphasize that the real number of losses may be much higher. In particular, journalists do not know the number of missing and captured.
• The Ministry of Defense of Russia does not disclose data on personnel losses and does not comment on the figures reported by journalists.