Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 3 – Moscow works hard to hide information about things it doesn’t want anyone to know both from its own people and from the outside world; but in many cases, the central Russian government fails in this effort because it unwittingly allows the release of information that reveals much about what it is trying to hide.
The latest example of this concerns MIAs in Putin’s war in Ukraine. Moscow hasn’t been willing to publish data about them, but those who search for information via Yandex about MIAs have found a treasure trove of information that speaks volumes about the regional recruitment and losses in the Russian Federation (baikal-stories.media/2026/08/03/bez-vesti-propal-na-svo/).
Prior to the summer of 2023, the data show, almost no one asked Yandex for citations about MIAs; but now more than 100,000 people are doing so every month with this metric reaching 116,000 in June 2026 alone. That figure understates the numbers, of course, because people ask for information in various ways.
But the figures one can obtain in this way are striking: People east of the Urals ask for information 50 percent more often than do Russians on average, with residents of Buryatia doing so 4.5 times more often than this average, while residents of Moscow and Moscow region ask about MIAs only half as often as the all-Russia average.
That reflects the higher number of soldiers sent to Ukraine from Siberia and the Far East in general and Buryatia in particular and the far lower numbers dispatched there from the city of Moscow and the surrounding Moscow Oblast, thus confirming stories about the pattern of recruitment but also showing where anger about MIAs is likely to be greatest.
More than that, this report should serve as a reminder to everyone that when Moscow stops publishing data, there often are alternative workarounds that allow observers to get the information they seek.
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