Politico: The Kremlin Is Panicking Over Cemeteries In Russia
- 12.11.2026, 12:19
The true casualties of the war are being concealed from the public with increasing rigor.
In Russia, a man was sentenced to 14 years in prison for posting photos of the gravestones of soldiers who died in Ukraine. The Kremlin is becoming increasingly strict in concealing the true casualties of the war.
This was reported by Politico.
In September, a court in Yaroslavl sentenced a middle-aged man to 14 years in prison. He had photographed the gravestones of Russian soldiers who died in the war in Ukraine.
The Kremlin remains stubbornly silent about actual battlefield casualties. That is why independent journalists and activists are counting the dead themselves based on photos of the graves. According to the publication, their figures are significantly higher than those Moscow is willing to acknowledge.
“The growing number of graves is likely what deeply troubles the authorities, as it reminds them of the failure of Putin’s war. Too many people have died,” said Jan Berends of the German Leibniz Center for Contemporary History.
In recent months, Russian authorities have warned that taking photos of military graves could result in a life sentence. The cemetery is patrolled by the Federal Security Service. Since the summer, several dozen people have already been arrested across Russia, journalists note.
The official charge in such closed trials is treason, specifically “collaboration with Ukrainian intelligence services.”
How Many Russians Have Died in the War
The independent publication “Mediazona,” in collaboration with the BBC’s Russian Service, maintains the Russia 200 database. It contains the names of nearly 283,000 fallen soldiers and details of the circumstances of their deaths.
“Mediazona” relies on open sources—social media posts and local media reports. However, the publication lacks the resources to document every casualty on the front lines.
Other organizations cite much higher figures. According to data from the UK Foreign Office and Dutch intelligence, Russia has lost more than half a million soldiers. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated in July that 700,000 Russians have already died in the war in Ukraine.
Even the most conservative estimates of Russia’s losses significantly exceed the Soviet Union’s losses in Afghanistan. That war lasted nearly ten years, beginning in 1979. According to media reports, the Kremlin tried to conceal the true cost of the war even back then.
“There was no way to mark a grave so that it would be clear: the person had died in the war. Some relatives were even forced to hold funerals at night so as not to attract attention,” says Jeff Jones, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina.
Relatives of those killed in Afghanistan were prohibited from indicating the place of death on headstones. Later, they were allowed to write “died heroically while fulfilling an international duty,” but the words “died in Afghanistan” remained off-limits.
How the Kremlin Hides Casualty Figures
In September 2022, six months after the start of the full-scale invasion, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported 5,937 Russian soldiers killed. Since then, there have been virtually no official reports of casualties.
When the “special military operation” (as the war against Ukraine is officially called in Russia) turned into a protracted conflict, Moscow stepped up its efforts to conceal the figures. It shut down every new channel used by those documenting the casualties.
In April 2024, a Kremlin spokesperson reminded journalists that information about casualties is a “state secret.” According to him, the disclosure of such information remains “the exclusive prerogative of the Ministry of Defense.”
Later that same year, Rosstat, Russia’s official statistics agency, restricted access to data on excess mortality in the country. This data had been publicly available since the 1990s.