Mortal regiment

Roman Lyadov, 46, from the Nizhny Novgorod region, was a veteran of the Chechen war who was drafted into an assault regiment two months before his death. He was killed in Ukraine in August 2022. His 23-year-old son, Kirill Lyadov, a professional soldier, died in Ukraine two months later.

Alexander Lyakhov was mobilised from the Krasnoyarsk region on 22 September 2022. He is survived by his wife, his 10-year-old daughter and his three-year-old son. Being asked by her grandson every day when his daddy will come back is “unbearable,” says Alexander’s mother through tears.

Alexander Baturin, 25, from Bashkortostan, died near Luhansk. After his death, his relatives learned that the remains they had been told were Baturin’s actually belonged to someone else. His mother is continuing to search for him, but has now given up hope she might find him alive.

Maxim Prosvirkin, 33, from Novosibirsk, was recruited by the Wagner Group from prison. His mother Yevgenia recalls that Maxim joined the mercenaries in November 2022, “hoping for a better life”. On 29 May, when Maxim was due to return home, Yevgenia received news of his death. She was asked to identify the body, but it was unrecognisable. Maxim’s mother now believes the body may not even be her son’s. The coffin was sealed and smelled strongly of a body. Yevgenia’s request for an autopsy and a DNA test were turned down. She feels helpless in her search for answers.

Russia’s losses in the war are not just kept silent, they are shamefully concealed: it takes months for bodies to be released by the military, funerals are ignored by the media, and the authorities continue their pretence that the war is going according to plan. By calling upon its citizens to “defend the homeland” in a foreign country, the state has deprived them of even the right to mourn their dead.

The war’s ideologues will have their own response to the accusations that soldiers’ deaths have been hushed up, and will no doubt point to the memorial plaques on buildings, so-called “hero desks” in schools devoted to the loss of an individual soldier in Ukraine, statues and renamed streets — all of which can be found in any Russian town. Death can be converted into patriotic memory quite effectively, especially if familial grief is ignored.

But as time passes, the propaganda narrative will inevitably be displaced by reality. The longer the war continues, the more people will ask: why was this all necessary?