Paul Goble
Staunton, Dec. 5 – Stalin infamously said “no person, no problem.” Putin has pursued that policy in part, but far more often, he has adopted an analogous position, clearly believing that if he orders disturbing data not to be published, then the problem will go away because coverage of it will become more difficult and less widely known.
The current Kremlin leader has adopted that approach on a variety of issues since he became Russian president and has done so ever more often since his war in Ukraine has featured so many developments that he would prefer not to be covered. The latest result of this approach is that Moscow has stopped publishing key data on invalids.
As a result, the To Be Precise investigative portal says, “now it is unknown just how much government funding is going for the treatment of invalids and [what may be even more significant] how many adults first received invalid status in 2024” (tochno.st/materials/rosstat-perestal-publikovat-cast-dannyx-ob-invalidnosti).
The Russian government’s Social Fund, which in the past has been the most important place for data on invalids, stopped publishing data in May 2023, and figures posted on its website then covered only the fourth quarter of 2022, the end of the first year of Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Its data and those of other government outlets offered global data but none divided into categories which would allow anyone to know exactly how many Russians had become invalids as a result of combat in Ukraine. But there is one indication of that still available: the number of Russians gaining the status of invalid fell by two-thirds from 2004 to 2021 but has risen since.
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