Paul Roderick Gregory
Russian president Vladimir Putin has decreed that all Russian casualties “in peacetime”
be a state secret. In addition to criminal charges arising from divulging state
secrets, families risk losing pensions and lump-sum payments if they reveal that their sons
were killed in Ukraine. Mothers of soldiers’ associations have beenbranded “foreign agents” for collecting data on
Russian casualties. Dissident Boris Nemtsov was murdered shortly before
completing his study of Russian casualtiesin Ukraine. Russian civil rights organizations,
working against the fog of official resistance, could confirm only several hundred battlefield deaths.
Business Life (Delovaya Zhizn) reports on markets, finance,
entrepreneurship, finance, and leisure, scarcely an outlet for sensational
information. Its innocuously entitled “Increases in Pay for Military in 2015,” however, reveals what appear to be official
figures on the number of Russian soldiers killed or made invalids “in eastern
Ukraine.” Russian censors quickly removed the offending material but not before it
had been webcached by the Ukrainian journal Novy Region (New Region). Here is the “top secret” material the
censors removed (my translation):
“Compensation of military personnel taking part
in military actions in Ukraine in 2014-2015.” In addition, the Russian
government, in a decision about the monetary compensation of military personnel
taking part in military action in eastern Ukraine, approved compensation for
families of military personnel who were killed taking part in military action
in Ukraine of three million rubles (about $50,000). For those who have become
invalids during military action, the compensation is one and a half million
rubles (about $25,000).
A payment of 1,800 rubles is envisioned for contract “fighters” for every day of their
presence in the conflict zone. In all, as of February 1, 2015,
monetary compensation had been paid to more than 2,000 families of fallen
soldiers and to 3,200 military personnel suffering heavy wounds and recognized
as invalids (my italics).”
Sovietologists found many secrets of the USSR by
digging into the Soviet press and technical and financial trade journals. That
fallen and invalided military personnel are compensated must be reflected
somewhere in budgets. As reported in Delovaya zhizn,
compensation payments for those killed and invalided in Ukraine came to almost
twenty million dollars, not a large share of the approximately $50 billion defense budget but large enough to
appear in an appropriate budget subcategory.
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