Many unclaimed Russian soldiers are being left in Ukrainian, Ukraine Government says

A Russian soldier's body was discovered on the side of the road near Sytniaky, Ukraine, On March 5, 2022. Image Credit: Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images. 

Thousands of unclaimed Russian soldier remains are said to be buried in Ukrainian morgues but Kremlin refused to accept the high death toll.

According to Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser of Ukraine's presidential administration told more than 7,000 eliminate Russian soldiers are being housed in morgues in refrigerated rail wagons around the country.

"'We don't believe in such quantities,' they said. This number is not available to us. 'We're not ready to accept them,' says the president." Arestovych told the paper about the Russian authorities' reaction.

More than 1,500 eliminate Russian soldiers are being held in morgues in Dnipro, Ukraine, said the city's deputy mayor, Mykhailo Lysenko, on April 13 on the TV channel Current Time.

According to reports, Russia has also transported thousands of dead soldiers from Ukraine to Belarus in order to conceal the number of soldiers killed.

NATO believes Russia has lost up to 15,000 troops during the conflict, while Ukraine claims to have killed nearly 20,000.

In comparison, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told CNN this week that his country has lost between 2,500 and 3,000 troops since the conflict began.

Meanwhile, Russia's official eliminate toll stands at 1,351, according to the most recent update on March 25.

On Wednesday, March 9, 2022, a tank operator's hat rests on the ground next to a destroyed Russian tank in Irpin, Ukraine, on the outskirts of Kyiv. Image Credit: AP

Without going into detail, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov acknowledged the high number of casualties for the first time last week, saying: "We have suffered significant troop losses. And it is a terrible tragedy for us."

Zelenskyy has criticized Russia's refusal to repatriate its dead soldiers, claiming that Russia treats them with less respect than dead pets.

"As the president of a country at war with Russian troops, I'm saying this to you. They are fighting a war, but they are not animals." According to The Guardian, Zelenskyy stated this in an online interview with Russian journalists in March.

The deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, who is in charge of working with Moscow to return the remains, has echoed the assertion that Russian officials refuse to take their soldiers' bodies.

In subsequent talks with Russian officials, she told The Guardian, they refused to recognize the severity of the losses or accept the bodies.

"We're keeping track of them all. The leftovers are kept in refrigerators. We tell them to take them; they're in body bags; we can give them to the Red Cross; we can send them to the Belarusian border; we'll give them to you anywhere you want "The paper, according to Vereshchuk.

All military deaths in Russia will be classified as state secrets, according to a directive signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2015.

This, combined with a controversial new rule that mandates a 15-year prison sentence for intentionally spreading "false" military news, has made it impossible for NGOs and officials to speak openly about the situation in Ukraine.

After Ukrainian forces overran a Russian stronghold outside Kyiv, Ukraine, on Thursday, March 31, 2022, a Ukrainian serviceman snaps a photo of a dead Russian soldier. Image Credit: Vadim Ghirda/AP

Many relatives of Russian servicemen are uninformed of their loved ones' fate due to the Kremlin's concealment.

Meanwhile, according to The Post, Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs has established a Telegram group where Russians can go through images of slain servicemen to identify relatives.

According to a Washington Post investigation, Ukraine is also employing facial recognition software created by a US company to identify dead soldiers.

According to The Guardian, some frantic family members are contacting organizations such as the Soldiers' Mothers Committee, which lobbies for Russian soldiers' rights, to identify missing soldiers.

"Hundreds of phone calls are coming in every day. It's nothing but a puddle of tears, "Svetlana Golub, the institution's executive director, told the paper about it.

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