Russian-backed separatists fighting in southeastern
Ukraine have not always been willing to acknowledge the extent of casualties
and mortalities in battle. Frequent gunfire and disruption in communications
have made it difficult both to count and to bury the dead.This is intervention
has become increasingly hard to hide, growing bigger, with more advanced
weapons, and capturing more territory for the nominal "separatist
army".
In Russia, it is now forbidden to talk about Russian
soldiers killed during peacetime. President Vladimir Putin, for whom the outcry
over Russian boys dying in eastern Ukraine apparently got too loud, signed a
decree to this effect.
That’s interesting, since according to Putin, there
aren’t any Russian soldiers who could be killed there. One who leans toward
being cynical could see in the edict – which bans discussion of something that,
according to the government, doesn’t exist – a kind of advancement for the rule
of law: Opposition leader Boris Nemzov paid with his life for his investigation
into Russian soldiers killed in the Donbas; he was gunned down. Russian mothers
who still dare to whisper the names of their dead sons, on the other hand, can
count on only having to report to a prison camp.
The Russian army determined a change in the way it
would use force across the border, forming composite units of volunteers from a
variety of garrisons and units so their identity would be harder to prove
Sustaining the operation in Ukraine and on its
borders has, however, required the mobilisation of units across the breadth of
Russia.
