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full screen Russian President Vladimir Putin in conversation with, among others, Deputy Defense Minister Anna Tsiviljova, on the left in the picture, who is also his cousin. Photo: Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Sputnik/Poolfoto Via AP/TT
Russia does not announce how many soldiers have died in the ongoing war of invasion in Ukraine, but a senior government figure has disclosed a classified document.
At a recorded meeting in the State Duma in Moscow, Anna Tsiviljova, Deputy Minister of Defense who is also a cousin of President Vladimir Putin, says that the authorities have received tens of thousands of cases regarding missing soldiers.
It is about people who send in DNA samples so that their missing relatives can be identified.
– This applies to all relatives who have contacted us – 48,000, Tsiviljova can be heard saying in the clip, which has been taken down from the Duma’s website but published afterwards by the independent news service Astra.
When she says this, another meeting participant, the chairman of the defense committee Andrej Kartapolov, objects:
– I would like to kindly ask you not to publish these figures about missing persons. It is particularly restricted classified information. When we compile the final documents, we don’t want these numbers floating around.
Anna Tsiviljova replies that she has not spoken about the number of missing persons, but only about relatives who have contacted the authorities for which she is responsible.
Independent Russian Mediazona and the British BBC work continuously to identify fallen Russian soldiers through various open sources. Up to and including November 22, they had found roughly 79,800 dead, but the true total is believed to be significantly higher.