The losses of the Russian army remain high in the Ukraine war.
One city northeast of Moscow in particular has had many victims to mourn.
Munich/Kostroma – Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, an estimated at least 177,680 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded.
At least that's what the Ukrainian general staff reported in its daily report on Saturday (April 8).
This cannot be verified independently.
Ukraine War: Heavy casualties in Russian 331st Airborne Regiment
A large city north-east of Moscow appears to have suffered a particularly large number of casualties among its young men.
We're talking about Kostroma, which is home to the 331st Airborne Regiment of the Russian Army.
According to the US broadcaster CNN, this is one of the Russian elite troops.
From the beginning of the Ukraine War, the regiment was at the front.
The British broadcaster BBC reports that the number of casualties suffered by the unit and thus also the city is correspondingly high.
Because: According to the report, 94 soldiers of the regiment have already fallen since the attack on the western neighbor.
This should be proven, for example, by a video that BBC researchers say they found on the Russian social media network V'Kontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook.
City: | Kostroma |
Region: | Kostroma Region |
Resident: | nearly 270,000 |
Location: | about 300 kilometers north-east of Moscow at the confluence of the Volga and Kostroma rivers |
Special feature: | one of the oldest Russian cities at all; 331st Regiment of the Russian Army is stationed here |
Ukraine War: Russian city of Kostroma suffers heavy casualties
This video is said to show soldiers' graves in a Kostroma cemetery, which BBC News in turn documented with screenshots showing graves decorated with photos of soldiers on crosses.
"The graves shown in the videos match the names of the soldiers that we have collected," the report said.
BBC News points out that the regiment's military activities have been constantly monitored since the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
In compiling the list of soldiers killed, the BBC team combed through V'Kontakte social media accounts and local media reports.
Russian Army: 331st Airborne Regiment on the Ukraine front
This was then compared with satellite and Google Street View images.
The described cemetery is said to be located in the north-east of Kostroma, which has more than a quarter of a million inhabitants.
According to the BBC, its own research team had confirmed 39 deaths by April last year, 62 by the end of July, and at the beginning of April 2023 the number of 94 deaths was documented.
To compare the high losses, a local website had already established in spring 2022 that the entire Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989) had cost the city 56 soldiers' lives.
It notes that the actual death toll for the 331st regiment is now "probably much higher".
"Some of the soldiers are from towns outside of Kostroma, which makes finding information about them much more difficult," it explains.
In addition, several soldiers were reported missing.
Pictures of the Ukraine war: great horror and small moments of happiness
Pictures of the Ukraine war: great horror and small moments of happiness
Losses in the Ukraine war: long since arrived in Russia's cities with over a million inhabitants
Despite the high losses, which have long since reached the megacities in western Russia, there is at least no public protest in civil society against the special operation, as the Ukraine war is called by the Kremlin.
Those who protest, like dissident and Nobel Prize winner Oleg Orlov, face lengthy prison sentences instead.
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Rubric list image: © IMAGO/Tsitsagi Nikita
