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The body of a Russian soldier lay on the side of the road after Ukrainian forces destroyed a Russian vehicle near Sitnyaki, Ukraine, on Thursday.
Russian Military Casualties
In the Soviet era, the Kremlin had a simple strategy for dealing with combat casualties in random foreign wars like the one in Afghanistan: silence on the subject.
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But Russian President Vladimir Putin faces a more complex reality as his government grapples with public acceptance of military deaths in Ukraine, where thousands of Russian troops trying to take control are facing unexpectedly fierce resistance from Ukrainian defenders.
In the age of social media, it is difficult for Russian authorities to fully contain and control the images of battlefields that flood the Internet: scenes of snow-covered corpses of Russian soldiers or plaintive footage of young Russian prisoners of war who say they were waiting to be welcomed. liberators
In response, Russian censors moved to block Russians' access to Facebook and some foreign news sites, and the government threw all its weight into a long-running media campaign to demonize Ukrainian leaders. With the war in its second week, independent media in Russia are being silenced and a new law threatens to criminalize critical coverage.
"It's a disaster, a tragedy and a shame," said Alexandra Lanskaya, a 58-year-old Moscow businesswoman and mother of three children aged 15 to 25. came to such a low level.
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Analysts say, however, that military losses alone are unlikely to be a strong enough escalation to threaten Putin's hold on power.
Russia's repressive regime is "relatively secretive and imprecise when it comes to victims, because the victims isolate part of the citizenry," said Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a professor at New York University.
But he and others saw little sign that Putin or his government would be blamed for the cost in the lives of service members.
"They're still working very hard to suppress information about the victims," said Michael Kaufman, a senior associate fellow at the Center for a New American Security. However, he said, while people are angry at the news of the soldiers' deaths, the Russian public is perfectly prepared to place any blame on NATO and the West.
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So far, public statements by Russian officials have tried to thread the needle: acknowledging that soldiers' lives are being sacrificed, but framing the cause as a just fight to "denazify" Ukraine.
As Russia waited seven days into the conflict to address the issue of battlefield casualties, the Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that 498 Russian service members had been killed and more than 1,500 wounded, figures met with skepticism by Western officials and analysts.
Nick Reynolds, who researches land warfare for the Royal United Services Institute, a British defense and security think tank, called the Russian figure "unrealistically low". He said Ukraine's counter-claim that the combined number of Russian dead and wounded exceeded 9,000 was "high, but not out of the realm of possibility."
In his first personal acknowledgment of military losses, Putin said in a nationally televised speech Thursday that the families of the dead would be entitled to a special payment of 5 million rubles, or about $50,000, each. While Western officials and analysts cited low military morale, a struggling supply chain and logistical difficulties for the invading Russian forces, the Russian president insisted in his speech that the military campaign was progressing "strictly according to schedule".
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Moscow's military operations are underpinned by a powerful public relations effort, led by state-run media that still has a large and loyal audience. Weeks before the war began, Ukraine was portrayed as a threat to Russia, not the other way around. Once an invasion began, it was officially considered a "special military operation", never an invasion or war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has cracked down on the media by blocking Facebook and Twitter and signing a bill criminalizing what Moscow considers "fake" news.
In Russia's past wars, news of military casualties was sometimes filtered through military families, who demanded to know the fate of loved ones serving in the military or, worse, received no word until the body bags arrived. But there has been a concerted official effort to discourage grassroots groups that help military families question the aims of the war.
Valentina Melnikova, founder of the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, a group that serves as a point of contact for relatives trying to trace the whereabouts of missing service members, describes the overwhelming anxiety of parents who suddenly realize they have lost contact with children. May have been captured or died in Ukraine in recent days.
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"I don't even want to discuss the emotional state of the callers," she said. "We don't let them cry, so they don't break our hearts."
But Melnikova was quick to insist that none of her faction or the military families questioned the government's overall goals. "Nothing about the war bothers them," she said of the distraught parents.
Ukrainian leaders have tried to capitalize on the idea that the young Russian infantry are considered little more than haphazard cannon fodder by their own commanders. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky likened Russian recruits to "confused children being used" in a video speech this week.
Ukrainian officials and volunteers have also helped captured POWs contact their families and are amplifying the stories of frightened and distraught Russian soldiers.
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The Ukrainian ambassador to the United Nations this week read what would be the last text messages from a Russian soldier to his mother in a courtroom, expressing horror and shock.
With growing signs that military pressure is building against Ukraine's capital Kiev, any talk of a battlefield setback by Russian officials is strictly forbidden. The Duma, Russia's parliament, has passed a bill making it a crime, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, to spread what it calls "false news" about the Russian military.
With the closure of the venerable Echo of Moscow radio station and the curtailment of broadcasts by the liberal Rain TV in recent days, the few remaining independent news outlets are under severe pressure. This, and the limitations of social media platforms, have made it very difficult for most Russians to access factual information about the war, said Joanna Sozostek, an expert on Russian political communication at the University of Glasgow.
"Ultimately, the Russian death toll in Ukraine will have an impact on Russian public opinion," Szostek wrote in an email. "But it may take a long time for accurate information to reach most Russians."
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"The official story was that Russia would not attack anyone, but if we were attacked we would respond strongly," said Pyotr Peshev, an 18-year-old university student in Moscow. "I don't understand who we are defending now."
Ukraine gained its independence in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russian President Vladimir Putin claims it was never a state.
The no-fly zone, many officials say, would draw the United States and its NATO allies into direct combat with Russia, which many liken the escalation to a world war. The air combat mission must be supported by ground operations and the US and its NATO allies must be prepared to enter by land, making it a "slippery slope from there to a shooting war".
There are established definitions and procedures for determining who is a war criminal and how they should be punished. An investigation into Putin's actions has already begun. The United States and 44 other countries are working together to investigate possible violations and abuses, and another is an International Criminal Court investigation.
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Several organizations in California, as well as international aid groups, are helping refugees, wounded soldiers and others in and around Ukraine. Here's how you can contribute. Sailors attend a memorial and funeral service for Capt. 1st Rank Andrei Pali, deputy commander of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, who was killed March 20, 2022 in Sevastopol, Crimea, in the eastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol. /Alexei Pavlishak
March 23 () - Russia on Wednesday held a memorial service for the deputy commander of its Black Sea fleet in Crimea, in what Ukraine says is the latest in a string of high-profile Russian military casualties since it invaded Moscow on February 24.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine's president, on Sunday named six Russian generals who he said had been killed in Ukraine, along with dozens of colonels and other officers.
The Russian Defense Ministry has not confirmed any of these casualties. It has not reviewed its troop casualties since March 2, a week into the battle, when it declared 498 of its soldiers dead. Ukraine puts the figure at 15,600.
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The local Russian government in the southern port of Novorossiysk confirmed the February 28 death of Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky in a statement on its website. He says he served in Syria, North Caucasus and Abkhazia.
Wednesday, hundreds
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