Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 25 – Even though the Russian
media are providing ever less coverage of Ukraine and Russia’s involvement
there than only a year ago (kommersant.ru/doc/3668042), Russians are gaining a deeper appreciation of what
that Putin-initiated conflict has cost them because Russian cemeteries now
feature more honest headstones for those killed in that conflict.
Novaya gazeta publishes a 2,000-word
article by Irina Tumakova entitled “They Were There” about cemeteries in Pskov
oblast that now have headstones that identify the dates of deaths of Russian
regular army soldiers who died in Ukraine at the start of the war. Earlier,
these facts were obscured (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2018/06/24/76916-oni-tam-byli).
But it is a measure of the way
things are now under Vladimir Putin who continues to insist that “there were no
Russian regular army units in Ukraine” that many people proved unwilling to
talk about their losses even though these losses and their location are
confirmed by new grave stones.
In 2014, cemeteries there filled up
with graves without the names or any dates, but now there are new stones with
names, dates, portraits, and unit affiliation, not only for losses in Ukraine
but also for losses in Syria. The appearance of these new stones means that
Russians now know both about their losses and about the lies the Kremlin continues
to tell them.
Given how important cemeteries are
in the lives of many Russians, this report, especially if similar developments
are occurring in other parts of the Russian Federation, the Novaya gazeta article represents an
important breakthrough, one that Russians, Ukrainians and people in the West
should take most seriously.
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