For First Time Ever, Rosstat to List Combat Deaths Separately in Mortality Tables

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 15 – Like its Soviet predecessor, the Russian government has not provided regular and reliable reports about combat losses, denying or falsifying the numbers when it has released them or hiding such losses in broader categories like deaths from industrial and highway accidents.

            The state statistical committee, Rosstat, has punctiliously followed this approach in the past. But now, for the first time ever, in its annual report about mortality in the Russian Federation during 2018, it has listed as separate category deaths from wounds received during military action (https://www.rbc.ru/society/15/06/2019/5d0383139a7947a86e1d87f6 and

znak.com/2019-06-15/rosstat_vpervye_nazval_chislo_pogibshih_v_rezultate_voyn_v_2018_godu).

            The committee reported that in 2018, there were four such deaths, three involving urban residents and one from a rural area. Rosstat acknowledged that such deaths earlier had been included in the losses from accidents column, but its officials did not explain why they had made the change.

            The appearance of the category is intriguing in and of itself, even as seems certain it will be no more accurate or reliable than earlier figures.  According to the head of the Federation Council’s defense and security committee, Viktor Bondarev, Russia suffered 112 combat fatalities in Syria alone, many of them in the first nine months of 2018.

            If that is the case, the figures in the new Rosstat category should be much higher than they are.