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As Russia claims victory in the now-ruined Ukrainian city of Mariupol and continues to repeat its mantra that “military special operation” is on track, a prominent Russian human rights activist has begun digging at the cost in lives of this war.
Marina Litvinovich told Fox News it was a tedious process: “There is no official database anywhere.
She added: “The government is making great efforts to hide the deaths.”
Officially, the latest death toll in Russia was 1,351 at the end of last month. Western countries and Ukraine have put them at 15,000. Litvinovich estimated there could be around 5,000. She herself has identified with just over 1,800, which she believed to be safe.
A resident looks on next to a building destroyed in the Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol. (REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)
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What she notes is that among the dead are a large number of 18- and 19-year-olds, she said, despite the government’s insistence on not sending conscripts into combat. Litvinovich also said she finds “many senior officers, majors, colonels who have died.”
She also said there was a lot of talk about how these soldiers died — often as sitting ducks. She said it didn’t look like war, but a mousetrap: “It was written that they died heroes, but the terrible thing is that many of them were just sitting in tanks when they were shot at. These are commanders’ mistakes that people are paying for.” Price.”
According to Litvinovich, the largest groups of the fallen she identified were young men from predominantly Muslim Dagestan or Buryats, natives of eastern Siberia. Both regions have high birth rates and few economic opportunities.
“It turns out,” she said, “that Russia is fighting this war by killing non-Russians.” But the war has paid off for men in far off regions, and that’s probably why they’re going here, those who are going voluntarily, she said,
Litvinovich said she thinks for families with eight children, where few jobs are available, the value of life is diminishing – as is risk aversion. She claimed that monthly salaries for many of these soldiers were around US$1,800, which she calculated would be nine times the average civilian salary in the key feeder regions of Dagestan and Buryatia. Families of soldiers who died in combat received 7 million rubles – about $85,000 at today’s rates.
“Human life has no value. It’s a scary story,” Litvinovich said. “Mother Russia should be cured of that.”
A view of the Mariupol Theater damaged during fighting in Mariupol, in territory under the government of the Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine, April 4. (AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov, file)
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In March, the Levada Center, Russia’s only independent pollster, found that 80% of Russians support the war. Some questioned whether those polls were accurate, but Levada said she was confident they were reflective.
Fox News asked Litvinovich if she thought the rising death toll among soldiers had changed that trend.
“It’s hard for me to say. Sociologists show the opposite, that even more people are now pro-war. It’s very hard to believe, but their numbers show it. Coffins came in and people, on the contrary, are gathering. You say, right, now we have to get rid of this fascist scum,” she said. “Goods cost more in the store, but that doesn’t change people’s attitude towards the war.”
She added that society is under such pressure that “people have drawn their picture of the world and they don’t want to move away from it”. Litvinovich said many people behaved in such a way that it almost seemed like they were part of a cult.
Litvinovich took part in a TV show about a long debate on whether anti-war Russians should stay in the country or leave. Hundreds of thousands have fled since the end of February. Many were journalists who simply couldn’t do their job without risking up to 15 years in prison. Litvinovich argued that the Russians should stay if possible, barring the threat of imprisonment.
Marianna Vishegirskaya stands outside a maternity hospital damaged by shelling March 9 in Mariupol, Ukraine. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov, File)
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Litivinovich, who has spent endless hours tracking the needs and status of Russian prisoners over the past few years, had her moment when she thought she was going too, but decided to stay. Just as the old Soviet posters used to sing that “the fatherland needs you” and your hard work, so Litvinovich thought that “the Putin project for Russia” was about to collapse and critical-thinking Russians were needed to run the country push back together. She didn’t say how soon she thinks that moment will come, but she was confident that it would only be a matter of time – and that this war will be the final nail in this Kremlin’s coffin.
“The state he built isn’t working,” she insisted. “I see my job as that of a doctor who has to treat a very sick, unhappy country. And to treat it you have to stay here.”