By: Jay Yi
With the Russia-Ukraine war also comes death, and the need for more soldiers, so civilians in Russia are enlisting in the army. As more soldiers die in the war, Russia has been keeping their death counts a secret. Because of this, many civilians have struggled to find information about enlisted relatives.
For example, one family was visited by the Russian army because the father was talking about how the military lied about his son. The military listed his son as missing, but 111 days later, they gave him a death certificate.
Since there is no exact death count, some media stations have been keeping their own. Some stations like BBC News count that 5,185 have died, but the CIA and M16 estimate that the number is actually above 15,000.
But now that some stories of people enlisting in the army and dying the next day have been shared on social media, civilians are rising up. For example, a group of wives sent a video to the army to demand that their husbands be returned home.
Another man posted on social media that the war was a “massacre started by crazy old men who think they are great geopoliticians and super strategists, incapable, in fact, of anything but destruction, threats against the world, puffing out their cheeks and endless lies.”
Bobo Lo, an independent analyst of the Lowy Institute, believes that the reason Russia has kept the death count a secret is to keep the unrest down.
Even with these small rebellions, many families are still not questioning the deaths. This silence proves that they have no idea what is going on in the frontlines.