Paul Goble
Staunton, July 17 – Since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine in February 2022, independent Russian media and Western experts have used data published by the Russian government’s statistic arm, Rosstat, to calculate how many Russian troops have been killed in that conflict.
Among recent examples of this practice, made necessary by the fact that Moscow only rarely addresses the question of combat deaths in Ukraine, are storage.googleapis.com/istories/news/2024/06/27/rosstat-poteri-70/index.html and t.me/mediazzzona/16552.
What such studies have done is to examine the data Rosstat has released about deaths from external causes in the age groups most involved in the fighting in Ukraine. But now Moscow has closed that window on its war losses by no longer releasing data on such losses by age groups (rosstat.gov.ru/folder/11110/document/13269).
As a result, independent Russian demographer Aleksey Raksha suggests in calling attention to this change, it will be far more difficult for anyone to come up with accurate data on Russian losses. That may please the Kremlin which wants to hide such losses, but it will also mean that there is likely to be a flurry of reports not based on Russian government statistics.
And that may have the effect of alarming ordinary Russians even more, exactly the opposite of what the Putin regime hopes for.
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