Afraid of panic – Putin’s plane carrying dead soldiers

New York (Dagbladet): Rossiya Airlines is a subsidiary of the Russian state-owned airline Aeroflot. They have 68 aircraft and helicopters in their fleet, which are used by the Russian leadership in the Kremlin. One of the aircraft compared to Air Force One and used by Putin.

Now this fleet is used to transport the bodies of dead Russian soldiers home from the war in Ukraine. The bodies were taken to local morgues in small groups to avoid public disorder and panic, according to the Russian Independent newspaper. Moscow Times.

The newspaper bases the information on flight data and information from morgue workers and relatives of the soldiers.

same plane

Among other things, Russian state media photographed a Russian Tu-134 with registration number RA-65911 when the plane landed in the Russian Republic of Tatarstan in March 2022 with the first servicemen from the area killed.

Putin himself used an aircraft with registration number RA-65911 when he visited the vicinity in 2016, according to photos from a local newspaper.

Several Russian flights were recorded in several Russian regions between January and early February of this year. The Moscow Times wrote that it had found a connection between these flights and local newscasts about the funerals of dead soldiers.

Biden vs. Putin: – Big mistake

It could not be determined exactly where the soldiers’ bodies were taken, but relatives of the soldiers told The Moscow Times that they came from a military hospital in the city of Rostov-on-Don, which is about ten miles from the border. with Ukraine.

– stinks

– When I was there, I saw six large forensic trucks that stank of rot and corpses. I saw cars full of corpses being unloaded – coffin after coffin. It was a terrifying picture for me even though I work in the intensive care unit and I saw the dead bodies. But I haven’t seen so much before, the son of one of the dead soldiers tells the newspaper.

The staff at the morgue state that they have been clearly instructed not to send more than one or two bodies per day to their families.

– We are a small town, so sending so many dead relatives at once would cause panic, an employee of a morgue in the Orenburg region tells the newspaper and continues:

– The authorities also want to avoid a situation where relatives gather around the morgue. It can lead to people fainting or other scandals. In general, they decided not to escalate the situation.

– Holy

Since Putin attacked Ukraine on February 24 last year, he himself has stopped flying. This is what investigative journalist Ilja Rozhedestvenskyj tells us at the Dossier Center CNN.

Instead, the Russian president now travels in a specially designed, armored train.

Most anti-Western since 2007

– The psychological reason for using this train is that it is afraid. Rozhedstvenskyj tells the TV channel that he is afraid that he, his plane could be tracked, and his plane could be shot down.

Unconfirmed numbers

How many Russian soldiers were actually killed during the year-long war in Ukraine is uncertain.

Written by the British Ministry of Defense in last week’s report That the Russian military and private mercenaries, such as the Wagner Group, may have had between 175,000 and 200,000 soldiers wounded or killed since the war began. According to the British authorities, up to 60 thousand of them were killed.

– Britain said that the percentage of wounded and dead has increased significantly since September 2022, when Russia introduced partial mobilization.

The Ukrainian military leadership claimed on the same day that Russia has lost 141,260 soldiers since the war began on February 24 last year. At the same time, Ukraine says about 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, while 30,000 have been wounded in the war.

There is a great deal of uncertainty associated with these numbers.

At the end of January, Defense Chief Erik Kristofferson told TV2 that Russia was beginning to approach about 180,000 soldiers dead and wounded.

– There are probably more than 100,000 dead or injured in Ukraine. In addition, in Ukraine there are approximately 30,000 civilians who died in this terrible war, according to Kristofferson.