Another Way Putin’s War in Ukraine Comes Home: Some Children of Combatants Living or Dead Now Getting Free Meals in School Others Don’t

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 1 – The Kremlin has worked hard to restrict information about Russian combatants and combat losses in Putin’s war in Ukraine lest information about the number of men actually being cycled through that conflict and especially the number of deaths among them reach the public and undermine popular support for the war.

            But sometimes, local and regional officials in their enthusiasm take actions which as Thomas Nilsen of The Barents Observer points out, allow analysts to calculate exactly the numbers Moscow doesn’t want known (thebarentsobserver.com/en/life-and-public/2022/08/two-free-hot-meals-kids-servicemen-fighting-senseless-war).

            On Aug. 31, the Murmansk Regional Duma unanimously passed a measure that requires government schools to provide two free hot meals each day to pupils whose parents are participating in the war in Ukraine or one of whose parents has died. The legislators said 1274 young people will benefit. Those whose parents aren’t involved in the war won’t.

            In releasing this number, the regional parliamentarians may “have violated the federal law which states that it is illegal to disseminate any information about the number of troops,” the whereabouts of military operations, and especially the number of dead. But given information about the population of the Murmansk region, it isn’t too difficult to calculate those.

            The region has “about 700,000 inhabitants, the fertility rate [2019] is 1,44 and the army had until late May an age limit of 18-40 years for professional soldiers. A majority of the warriors fighting the war are younger age and have no children, or children younger than school age. [And it] has about 80,000 pupils and students at colleges, Nilsen reports.

            Using such indirect indications of numbers Moscow didn’t want anyone to know was a staple in Soviet times; unfortunately, under Putin, learning how to do this is again a requirement of those who want to find out what is actually happening there. But even more important may be the fact that this Murmansk policy is bringing the war home to many who see it only on TV.