As of: February 25, 2024, 5:48 p.m
By: Karsten Hinzmann
Comments
Press
Split
There is a daily threat of one's own end - a Russian soldier in a destroyed water filter station in the Donetsk region.
© IMAGO / Dmitry Yagodkin
They are growing almost endlessly: Russian cemeteries that need space for Putin's fallen troops.
Satellite images make the horror clear.
Stavropol – Russia has brought great death to Ukraine with its war of aggression;
and took it home again.
Dramatic stories keep coming from the country where the bloody war brought indescribable suffering to hundreds of thousands of people.
Since the attack by Vladimir Putin's troops and the two-year war in Ukraine, cemeteries everywhere have been bursting at the seams to accommodate the many new dead.
They are expanding in Ukraine as well as in Russia itself, as
Business Insider
now reports.
The dead are often visited, the
taz
wrote about a burial ground in Kiev.
The burial grounds now seem to be eating up so much land that individuals are in danger of losing their identity in the mass deaths and their relatives will never know who is laid to rest where.
Final rest: Russian fallen soldiers buried at home
The magazine relies on the satellite service Maxar - according to their satellite images, the areas of existing cemeteries in Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine or on the territory of Russia have been enormously expanded;
sometimes double.
This applies, for example, to the Bogorodskoye cemetery near the city of Ryazan in Russia;
Business
Insider
compares Maxar images from the end of October 2021 to mid-April 2023.
Maxar associates this cemetery with the 106th Russian Guards Airborne Division.
This unit is believed to have played a key role in Russian operations in the heavily contested city of Bakhmut;
with the corresponding losses.
In parallel to the satellite images that have now been published, various figures about victims of the Ukraine war are currently being published again, especially reports of soldiers losing their lives - February 24th marked the second anniversary of the Ukraine war;
Science unanimously argues that there is no end in sight to the Ukraine war.
For now.
“The battle will continue to simmer for a long time,” said the German military historian Sönke Neitzel recently, using the image of a pot simmering on a low flame.
However, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine recently flared up in the city of Avdiivka - Vladimir Putin has now conquered the city.
Apparently at a shockingly high price – this is also confirmed by the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
.
Estimated interim status: More than 300,000 soldiers lost on the Russian side
At the end of January this year, James Heappey, Minister of State for the British Armed Forces, stated in a written answer to a parliamentary question that there were more than 350,000 dead and injured on the Russian side, according to the paper.
The
New York Times,
citing the US government, wrote of 120,000 Russian soldiers killed and 170,000 to 180,000 injured.
The Ukrainian army recently estimated that it had killed or disabled more than 405,000 Russian soldiers during the invasion.
However, statisticians consider this number to be exaggerated and rather politically charged.
My news
Russian drone tracks Baerbock column: Minister has to cancel visit to Ukraine read
Russia openly threatens to shoot down NATO jets – read “return of particularly aggressive attitude”.
Baerbock announces a “long overdue” step – in the future there will no longer be any talk of “Kiev”.
1 hour ago
Sanctions against Russia: Putin ally Medvedev threatens the West with revenge
AfD stops free poll fall – two traffic light parties read
Two years after Putin's attack - what's next in Ukraine?
Eight thinkers answer read
People in Europe are pushing for a negotiated solution
According to a recent survey, many people in Europe are pessimistic about Ukraine's chances of victory against Russia because of the ongoing losses.
As the
European Council on Foreign Relations
in Berlin announced, only ten percent of those surveyed in the survey carried out on behalf of the think tank believe that Ukraine will win.
Twice as many, however, expect a Russian victory.
The largest group – 37 percent – is convinced that an end to the war will be achieved through a negotiated solution.
41 percent of survey participants would like Europe to pressure Ukraine to negotiate with Russia.
According to the information, more than 17,000 adults in twelve EU countries were interviewed for the survey in January 2024, including Germany, France, Poland and Sweden.
Source: Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk
From their observations of regionally growing cemeteries, Maxar's analysts infer the losses of specific units because they suspect that the soldiers would be buried close to their home garrisons: Maxar, for example, provides images of the cemetery in the town of Mikhailovsk near Stavropol in Russia and Blyzhnje on the Crimea - according to Maxar, fallen soldiers from the 7th Guards Air Assault Division are buried on both cemeteries.
Michael Zinkanell, director of the
Austria Institute for European and Security Policy (AIES)
, warned the
Tagesschau
to be as sober as possible when dealing with the figures and supposed facts presented.
In his opinion, it is simply impossible to collect reliable data due to the confusion of the events on site.
This means that the question of the plausibility of troop movements can only be answered hypothetically and it is not possible for either side to quantify the exact losses – both in terms of personnel and material – says Zinkanell.
As long as the fighting continues, the numbers will primarily be published for a specific purpose.
Frightening suspicion: fallen Russians are being burned by their own troops
At the end of last year, the Kiev Independent
had already suggested a particularly critical assessment of the number of casualties,
contradicting parts of Maxar's thesis: In order to hide losses, Russian armed forces are said to have burned dead soldiers in occupied Ukrainian territories instead of sending their corpses to Russia to transport - the
Kiev Independent
had cited Ukraine's Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maljar.
For example, according to Maljar, near the occupied town of Melitopol in Zaporizhzhia region, dead Russian soldiers were being cremated, as she said, “almost continuously.”
Residents could have noticed the characteristic acrid smoke over a longer period of time.
Since the beginning of hostilities there have been repeated reports of graves on Ukrainian territory.
The Austrian colonel and military observer Markus Reisner had already speculated early on to the
editorial network Germany (RND)
that combatants outside of the regular Russian armed forces were buried there.
“It is most likely that these are fighters from the Wagner group who were killed, as they often no longer have any relatives in their homeland or have broken up with their families and therefore remain in Ukraine,” Reisner told
RND
.
As far as he knows, members of the Russian army are actually usually transferred to Russia.
However, he believes it is unlikely that fallen Ukrainians would be buried in individual graves.
“Killed Ukrainian soldiers are usually buried massed in pits by the Russians and not buried in such individual graves.”