“The war has a” price: Journalists listing Russia's dead soldiers

Olga Ivyna, a senior reporter for the BBC's Russian service, immediately recalls Mikhail Shuvalov, a retired power plant employee who, at the age of 71, volunteered to fight in Ukraine. David Frankel, a data reporter for the independent Russian news portal Mediazona, recalls Alexander Jmur, a 19-year-old parachutist who had the terrible fate suggested by his last name HINA Russian jargon for “kufome”.

For Elena Trifonova, cofounder and editor of the Siberian news site Lyudi Baykala, the list of local men who died at the beginning of the conflict soon became confusing. Almost every soldier from the far east regions of Irkutsk and Burythia had the same death announcement: he finished school, joined the army, and died in Ukraine.

Because the Russian government rarely publishes the death toll from its war in Ukraine, independent journalists have spent last year identifying, verifying and counting victims themselves. The effort has increased as much as Mediazona, one of the news media after the initiative, published a call for more volunteers earlier this month.

It's not a good job, but someone has to. We want to show the public that even for patriotic Russia, Russia for Putin, the war has a price and that price is Russian soldiers,” said Frankel.

A nationwide database, run jointly by the BBC Mediazon and Russian service, has confirmed over 15,000 deaths since last spring, with Frankel praising that the real number is at least double.

Lyudy Baykala has confirmed some 750 deaths in the area of Siberia that covers, most of them in the heavily mobilised Republic of Burma. Pskovskaya Guberniya, a local newspaper in Russia's western region, Pskov, has placed the death toll on the scene at 142.

The Russian Defence Ministry last announced an official number of 5,937 dead in September. Western authorities estimate that at least 200,000 Russians were killed or injured in Ukraine last year.

Svetlana Avanesova, editor at Pskovskaya Guberniya, said the small publishing team tries to monitor deaths every day by decoupling increasingly rare reports by the regional governor and posts in social media by grieving lovers.

In some cases, journalists have discovered or confirmed death through the collection of funds for the dead and the appointment of local roads in honour of fallen soldiers, Avanesova said.

The paper was first launched to assess the “scale of lies said by authorities as they sought to downplay the number of deaths, she said, but getting information has become increasingly difficult.

We're doing this for the story so that we and our readers understand the number of victims,” said Avanesova. “We don't know what kind of history Russia will write... but nobody else in the Pskov region is doing this or writing about it.

Ivsina also had in mind Russia's historic turmoil over war deaths when it began to compile victims' figures for the BBC Russian service in March.

There is not yet a final figure of how many people died in World War II, the Sovjeto-Afgane War or Russian military actions in Chechnya, she said. Victims reported by the government in the First Chechen War, for example, are less than half the figures counted by human rights groups, she said.

For this war we can give at least one figure, which is not an assessment, but is 100% verified”, Ivsina said.

Russia's efforts to minimise human victims in Ukraine are becoming more evident as fighting drags on in the second year, Ivsina said.

The deaths, which were once announced by regional governors and state news media, are now largely left to local media and lower-level village officials, schools, community organisations and even libraries, she said.

Ivyna spends a lot of time listing information from about 70 cemeteries across the country. Graveyards usually show that for every soldier with public name buried in Russia, another is buried quietly, whose name cannot be found in any public source, she said.

For the first six months of the war, tomb stones displayed a photo of the soldier in uniform, but the practice has since stopped, says Ivsina.

The record of losses has highlighted other trends. Thus, the high number of officers killed at the beginning of the Russian occupation meant that there were insufficient resources to train new recruits properly, leading to higher casualties as the war progressed.

The Mediazone does not publish the names of the soldiers who died in Ukraine, but the Russians can search for their loved ones through a telegram published by volunteers, Frankel said.

War volunteers are also working within Russia, wandering through the cemetery to take pictures of new graves. Their names are kept secret by each other and by the staff on the site since it is legally dangerous to collect data on the Russian Army.

Frankel, the technical project leader, creates visualizations from posts and tries to find ways to automate the process of finding and verifying deaths.

“We know that it is not possible to continue this task by hand for years”, Frankel said.

We won't stop. But rationally, I understand that at some point, maybe even if the war isn't over, it can be extremely difficult for team members to keep working on the same thing. ”

Many of the project volunteers are fed up with work, he said. Frankel also sees his role mentally weighed down, even to one point.

It's sad to go through all the dead faces, but it's even more depressing when you read about Bucha, for example, or the people who died at Marioupol”, he says. This is unmatched with atrocities committed by Russian troops in Ukraine. ”

A journalist writes a manual to the list held by Louis Baykala, according to editor Trifonova. It was traumatic, too, she said.

The “is very morally difficult”, Trifonova said. You can't get used to this. ”

The list has increased rapidly in recent months: publication staff confirms about 40 deaths a week, compared to about 20 at the beginning of the war.

The figures appear to increase and fall in line with the Russian offensive, Trifonova said, though the victims usually do not reach just months later, because it takes time for troops to be repatriated.

The big “Tarifa” that has received war on the ground at least 544 men from Burythia and 203 from the Irkutsk region was unimaginable when journalists began covering and drafting a list of local funerals in April, Trifonova said.

The publication does not want authorities to be able to say, “We do not have major losses,” she said.

Lyud Baikala has pledged to continue pursuing death no matter how long the war lasts or how hard and how hard it takes time, said Tirfonova, adding that she hoped to finally pass through the strong propaganda of the state, which has convinced so many Russians of the legitimacy of the war.

No one wants war, but many believe this war was necessary,” said Tirfonova.

Let them look at the lists of the dead and think how necessary she was. /The Moscow Times