Local Leaders in Russia Afraid to Use Official Sites to Talk about Combat Losses in Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 25 – Moscow has been extremely chary in releasing any information on Russian combat losses in Putin’s war in Ukraine, choosing instead to have regional and local officials to talk about individual deaths both in the hopes that the center can hide just how many Russians have died or been injured or avoid censure by shifting attention from itself to others.

            But in at least some localities, government officials have been unwilling to say anything, including about the funerals of those Russian soldiers who have died, on public sites, choosing instead to use social media, an approach that is only adding to popular suspicions that the Putin regime is hiding something (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2022/03/25/mesiats-spetsoperatsii-zametki-iz-glubokogo-tyla).

            Some mayors where funerals are taking place are not using their official sites to make these announcements but choosing instead to use their own social media accounts, apparently fearful that if they use the former they will get in trouble with Moscow but exacerbating popular feelings that the regime is not only hiding something but is unwilling to honor its soldiers.

            How widespread this phenomenon is remains unclear, but it appears to be one of those actions from which no one expects much to flow but from which a tectonic shift in popular attitudes toward the powers that be may occur. Not being willing to honor war dead in the most public manner strikes at the very core of what Russians like all other people expect.