Monday, December 1, 2014

Window on Eurasia: Russians Want Truth about Combat Losses in Ukraine, but Kremlin Continues to Try to Hide It


Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, December 1 – A Levada Center poll shows that 41 percent of Russians now say  they should be told the truth about the deaths of Russian soldiers in southeastern Ukraine, but the Russian government won’t provide it because to do so would undercut its claim that there are no Russian forces there at all.

 

            And in support of its effort to maintain its version of reality, Darya Garmonenko writes in today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta,” the Kremlin is deploying the courts against those in Russian society who have investigated the situation and sought to bring it to the attention of their fellow citizens (ng.ru/politics/2014-12-01/3_osadok.html).

 

            The Kremlin has brought two charges against Lyudmila Bogatenkova, the president of the Mothers of Prikumya Human Rights Organization, the first for fraud and the second for failing to repay a debt. But both charges, the Moscow journalist says, are connected with her efforts to find out about Russian combat losses in Ukraine and to communicate this to others.

 

            The problem is, as Aleksey Makarkin, the vice president of the Moscow Center for Political Technologies, is that such charges give the patina of legality to what is a political campaign and that they will harm Bogatenkova’s reputation and keep her from doing her work even if as might happen they are shown in court to be without any foundation.

 

            The Levada Center conducted a special poll about the case. Only 12 percent believed the charges, and an equal share said that “in reality she is engaged in anti-Russian activities but that the law enforcement agencies couldn’t charge her with that.” Twenty-two percent said that they were certain that she was charged with these “crimes” because of her efforts to learn the truth.

 

            These findings suggest that as Russian combat losses mount in a war that Vladimir Putin still insists Moscow is not fighting, ever more Russians do not believe what they are being told by the official media and are worried about the number of dead and injured from the conflict in Ukraine.

 

            Among those particularly concerned are those with sons in the army or those in the army itself. Indeed, one outspoken anti-war activist, Elena Vasilyeva, says that the increasing number of combat dead is beginning to affect the Russian army itself, not only increasing resistance within it to any orders to go there but also leading to talk about the need to overthrow Putin (nr2.com.ua/News/world_and_russia/Pravozashchitnica-Voennye-gotovy-podnyat-bunt-protiv-Putina-85736.html).

 

            Vasiliyeva, who has been criticized for what some say is her tendency to overstate Russian losses and Russian soldiers’ opposition to being sent to Ukraine, likely is overstating the case with this observation, but she is pointing to a trend, perhaps not as far along as she suggests, but one that must be worrisome to the Kremlin and the Russian elites more generally.

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