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Vladimir Putin’s propaganda would like to make them heroes who sacrificed themselves for Russia, but it is in spite of themselves that many of these soldiers found themselves on the front lines. “Special Envoy” investigated in Buriatia, where young people, promised unemployment, come to swell the ranks of the Russian army. In this excerpt, here is the testimony of Katia, whose husband “who barely knew how to hold an automatic weapon” died at the age of 22.
How many Russian soldiers have the “special military operation” in Ukraine already claimed their lives? To this question, which represents one of the greatest taboos of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the authorities only answered once, in March 2022. The Russian Ministry of Defense then reported 1,351 dead. Six months after the start of the conflict, Western intelligence services multiplied this figure by at least ten, estimating the number of soldiers who fell at the front at between 15,000 and 50,000 men.
Yakov Ivanov is one of them. This young Buryat died in Ukraine at the end of April, just before celebrating his 23rd birthday. He leaves a 4-year-old son, a baby he never knew, and his wife Katia. This testifies in a report by “Special Envoy” in Buryatia, to be seen in preview on the Franceinfo site from Sunday, September 18. This deprived region on the borders of Siberia provides a large number of these soldiers sent to Ukraine, whom Russia presents as heroes who have sacrificed themselves for their country.
Committed to escape poverty and propelled into a war that no one foresaw
A mechanic by training, Yakov did not particularly want to become a soldier, assures Katia. It was the pay (twice any salary in a region with one of the highest unemployment rates in the Federation) and job stability that made him decide to join, “to feed his family”. It was two years ago, when no one could imagine that Russia would declare war on Ukraine.
“It was by seeing the corpses in the streets that the soldiers understood what was happening”
Katia, widow of Yakov Ivanov, who died in Ukraineto “Special Envoy”
After being sent to Crimea in November 2021 under the pretext of military training, Yakov found himself thrown, according to his widow, without any preparation, into a war that no one saw coming. Left without news for weeks, Katia today knows almost nothing of the circumstances of her death. Her husband “who barely knew how to hold an automatic weapon in his hands” died in action two months after the start of the war, “without being able to see what her baby looked like”.
Excerpt from “These dead that Russia does not want to see”, a report by Mikhaïl Bobchinsky, Virginie Vilar and Adrien Bellay, to see in “Special Envoy” on September 22, 2022, and in preview on Franceinfo from Sunday September 18, 2022 .