“Killed for (President Vladimir) Putin’s lies,” the plate says.
This photo, taken by a Ukrainian soldier, is one of many pieces of evidence of Russian soldiers dying massively in Ukraine. The Facebook group’s name is a code word for sealed coffins that are used to carry bodies back home, which was set up in August by Russian volunteers to help relatives find men who could be fighting and dying in Ukraine.
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Eleva Vasilieva, a human rights activist and the group’s founder, says that the total number of deaths of Russian soldiers and mercenaries in Ukraine warfare could be about 4,000.
“We don’t know the number of wounded and those who could be killed of wounds as this figure is hidden,” she said at a press briefing in Kyiv.
“Under Ilovaisk on Aug. 25-27, when the Russian troops were deployed, we recorded the first thousand of Russian officers (killed) just in two days,” she added.
She said the dead bodies were shipped back, partly using the so-called humanitarian convoys organized by the Russians, allegedly to bring aid to areas that suffered the most.
By now, the Cargo 200 group has more than 23,000 members. But more importantly, it has helped to track and identify about 200 killed Russian soldiers and help build up social pressure to stop the Russian war in Ukraine.
On Sept. 5 Ukraine and Russia agreed about seize fire in eastern Ukraine, but despite the truce almost 100 soldiers have been killed on both sides, according to Vasilieva’s estimates.
Russian authorities have denied any involvement of regular troops in Ukraine, despite numerous photos of killed Russian soldiers, and media testimonies of their relatives at home.
Russian troops are still present on Ukraine’s territory, according to the nation’s officials. Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the National Security and Defense Council, said that 76 Russian military officers met on Sept. 26 near Donets city with Ukrainian side and monitors of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to discuss seize-fire and creation of artillery-free buffer zone in Donetsk, following an agreement in Minsk on Sept, 19.
Michael Bociurkiw, spokesperson of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, confirmed that monitors of this organization participated in talk with “Ukrainian and Russian military officers in Soledar (Donetsk Oblast).”
Vasilieva said she didn’t have information about the number of Russian soldiers present in Ukraine at the moment. But she said that in late Augusts, when the Russian troops started massively crossing into Ukraine, there were up to 30,000 troops, including representatives of Transnistria, the self-proclaimed republic on the territory of Moldova.
“This figure was supported by various sources, including military ones,” she said.
Vasilieva also said that the number of Ukrainian fighters killed in this war is up to 10 times higher than the official figures show. “We estimate the losses of Ukrainian side at up to 8,000,” she said.
Civilian losses are “impossible to count,” she said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at grytsenko@kyivpost.com
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