The Russian authorities have for the first time admitted to sustaining heavy losses following a Ukrainian attack, and the shift in the communication strategy seems to be meant to prevent a scandal, the Russian independent media writes. Independent journalists also discuss the Russification of Ukrainian children deported to Russia and the arms race triggered in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.
VERSTKA: For the first time, the Russian authorities did not conceal huge casualties among the mobilized
The official recognition of the death of at least 89 mobilized people, who on New Year’s Eve were targeted by a Ukrainian missile attack in Makiivka, a Donetsk suburb, marks the first time since the start of the war when Russian authorities confirm such severe losses in the wake of a single strike. Previously, the Russian Ministry of Defense either tried to play down the importance of such incidents, or denied them altogether. Sources within the federal authorities close to Verstka.media explain the change of approach, arguing it is impossible to hush up the large number of victims reported in a single region, describing it as an attempt to anticipate upcoming events in the context of the information war.
Official Russian sources reported on the losses sustained at Makiivka almost simultaneously, around 4 PM on January 2. The Ministry of Defense released a statement about an attack on New Year’s Eve, when six HIMARS were launched on Makiivka, “two of which were destroyed”. At the time, authorities reported 63 servicemen had been killed, but the death toll meanwhile rose to 89. According to eye-witnesses interviewed by Verstka, the real death toll might stand at “around 200”. The attack allegedly killed 400 people, Ukrainian forces say.
At the same time, Samara regional governor, Dmitry Azarov, said that “Servicemen from our own region were also under attack”. Among them, Azarov argues, “are wounded and, unfortunately, dead”. At the time of the attack, the tragedy in Makiivka was already a topic of debate on Telegram channels reporting on the war. Relevant details of the attack, for instance the existence of a depot storing ammo and military equipment in one of the buildings housing the mobilized, were later confirmed in part by official statements of the Ministry of Defense.
The official spokesperson of the Defense Ministry was Lieutenant-General Sergey Sevryukov, the first deputy head of the Main Military and Political Directorate of the Russian Federation’s Armed Forces. Servryukov is the highest-ranking officer of the Defense Ministry to meet the families of the mobilized since early November, 2022. All this time, the Ministry received an overwhelmingly high number of public complaints from the mobilized and their families regarding the conditions of military service. Servyukov’s meetings were confirmed for Verstka by the relatives of Russians sent to the frontline. […]
Vertka’s sources inside the federal government, close to the president’s representative to the Volga federal district, claim that the decision to take the Makiivka tragedy public was taken “jointly by regional and federal authorities”. “There are many dead, it’s a hard thing to hide. It was better if we went public about the situation first, rather than having the enemy talk about it. This was considered a just decision – the scandal didn’t spread to its potential scale”, the aforementioned source said.
Samara regional authorities did not wait for the victims of the mobilized to stage protests, which is what happened at the end of 2022, but took the initiative themselves. On January 3, they staged commemorative rallies in several cities in the region, with members of the Young Guard of United Russia acting as extras. The top participants and speakers included activists loyal to the central government, such as Yekaterina Kolotovkina, who describes herself as a “hero’s wife”. She called for “avenging” the dead of Makiivka. Kolotovkina is known for having taken part in the organization of the “Heroes’ wives” photo exhibition. Azarov personally presented Putin with an album of this photo collection. Zasekin writes that the wives of mobilized Russians wanted to stage a protest action of their own on the same day, but the authorities seized the opportunity before them.
The attack in Makiivka was the first since the beginning of the war when the Ministry of Defense and civil authorities recognized losses and sought to find those responsible in their own ranks. Previously, in similar situations, Russia’s Armed Forces did not officially react to reported death tolls or called them fakes.
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RE:RUSSIA: “Russification policy”: no one knows how many Ukrainian children were deported to Russia, but their numbers could be in the hundreds of thousands
Shortly after Russia recognized the so-called people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, the “evacuation” of residents started, in addition to a far-reaching campaign aimed at deporting Ukrainian children to Russia. Subsequently, the campaign was extended to other territories controlled by the Russian army. The Ukrainian website “Children of the War” has identified the names of 13,876 deported children, although according to different sources, between 300 and 715 thousand minors have already been sent to Russia. The Russian legislation was amended to simplify procedures for the provision of the Russian citizenship to these underage children, also eliminating certain barriers to their adoption in Russia. Similarly, their future adoptive parents receive ideological training. Prix Goncourt laureate Jonathan Littell notes that the policy resembles the “Germanization” introduced by the Third Reich in occupied territories in the Czech Republic and Poland.
The first reports of children being deported from Ukraine to the Russian Federation made headlines in the second half of March, when the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry accused Moscow of illegally transporting to Russia 2,389 minors from the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. In early June, on the sidelines of the OSCE meeting in Vienna, the Ukrainian delegation raised the question of the illegal deportation to Russia of some 230 thousand Ukrainian children. According to Ukrainian representatives, the deportation represents a serious violation of international law, in particular the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) and the Convention on Children’s Rights (1989) […]
The institution that takes charge of the adoption of deported children is the Center for Family Education Assistance of the Russian Federation, which de facto serves as a foster home. People who have expressed an interest to adopt children from Ukraine are required to attend ideological education classes. The first reports of the ideological indoctrination of future legal guardians came from the region of Moscow, and later from other regions. The authors of the Amnesty International report claim that the Kremlin particularly focuses on indoctrination of legal guardians and children, with the purpose of robbing the latter of their Ukrainian identity and Russifying them.
Due to the sharp influx of orphans, an increase was reported in the number of children who were returned to foster homes, most often due to severe illness. In order to curb their incidence, the Russian government ordered a medical screening of over 82 thousand Ukrainian children over November 1 – December 31, earmarking 350 million rubles for this process. […]
The biggest issue remains ascertaining the exact number of children deported from Ukraine, as these figures are now a topic of war propaganda. According to data of the Bulletin of the Joint Coordination Headquarters dated November 28, some 4.8 million people were “evacuated” from occupied territories, including the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, of whom 715,816 were children. According to human rights presidential adviser Daria Gerasimchuk, it is more likely Russia is exaggerating the number of “saved” children. The opinion was also shared and backed by disinformation expert Xenia Ilyuk from Detektor Media, who believes that reports of “saved” children serve a propaganda purpose, which is why official sources tend to provide overinflated numbers. Furthermore, the figures are also meant to attract a larger budget. Therefore, Kyiv authorities believe that the number of deported minors actually stands at some 300 thousand. The Government of Ukraine has created a portal called “Children of the War”, a website that verifies and publishes data about children and their real names. According to a December 27 report, 450 children were killed in the war, 868 were wounded, 332 are missing and another 13,876 were deported.
NOVAYA GAZETA.EUROPE: The world has learned. Russia has triggered a new arms race: even its “allies” now want to protect themselves
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to the biggest growth of the worldwide military-industrial complex in the last 20 years. All of the states bordering Russia — from Norway to Mongolia — are building up their military capacity, Finland and Sweden are planning to join NATO, Latvia is bringing back compulsory conscription, and Georgia is increasing its defence expenditure with the purpose of deterring “aggressive forces”. It is expected that the worldwide defence budget will reach a record high in 2023 and will then continue increasing. Novaya-Evropa has studied the new arms race and its developments. […]
The neighbours are scared the most
In 2022, 35 out of the 40 countries responsible for over 60% of all worldwide military expenses increased their defence budgets. Among the leaders when it comes to growing the military-industrial complex is Kazakhstan: financial contributions to the republic’s defence have jumped by 75%. In July, Wall Street Journal published a story on the government’s plan to reform the army and strengthen the relations with the US, China, and Turkey following the start of the war in Ukraine.
In 2023, the growth of the military-industrial complex will speed up. Poland is one of the leading countries planning to grow their military capacity. Its defence expenditure will almost triple — from $13 billion to $31 billion.
“The best strategy is to deter the opponent with the power of one’s own army and through cooperation with others,” Poland’s Prime Minister said during military exercises in November. In 2023, the budget of the country’s Defense Ministry will be higher than the military budgets of Ukraine, Turkey, and almost all European countries.
In November, two missiles fell on the territory of Poland, near the Ukrainian border. A week later, a shell ended up on the territory of Moldova. “This once again proves that Russian missile terror poses a huge threat not only to the safety of Ukraine, but also to the safety of neighboring countries,” the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Oleh Nikolenko said.
In 2023, Moldova plans to increase its defense budget by 75%. “We need to develop our defence sector, including air defense, or join different associations that were created at the EU level,” Moldova’s Minister of Defense Anatolie Nosatîi stated during the Moldova-Europe Integration Forum.
Armenia ranks third when it comes to the growth of the military-industrial complex. Amid the conflict with Azerbaijan, the government plans to increase defense expenses by 50%. After the recent clashes on the border, Yerevan’s officials lamented Armenia’s lack of modern arms. The country’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that Russia failed to supply weapons and lost control over the Lachin corridor that connected Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia.
The new leader in the arms race is Turkey. Last year, Turkey’s government increased the army’s financing by 30%, and in 2023, it went up by 50%. “As a result of increased threats in the world and in our neighborhood, we are increasing our defense budget for 2023 to a high enough level, 469 billion liras [$25 billion]”, President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in October. Meanwhile, Turkey’s Defense Minister called on Greece and Cyprus to refrain from further arms procurement, so as not to “end up in a deadlock situation”.
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NATO’s second life
The worldwide military-industrial complex was growing steadily up until the end of the 2000s. In 2010, the biggest economies led by the US and UK paused the increase of military spending. The growth of military financing resumed after Crimea’s annexation. Back then, NATO member states held a summit in Wales to discuss “Russia’s actions against Ukraine which challenged the fundamental principles of a united, free, and peaceful Europe”.
Following the meeting, it was decided to “reverse the trend of declining defense budgets”: the Alliance members pledged to spend no less than 2% of GDP on their defense budget by 2024. In 2014, this was only being done by the US, UK, and Greece. By 2022, the Baltic states, Turkey, Poland, Slovakia, and Croatia had joined them, however, this is still not even half of the Alliance’s 30 members.
Western Europe countries — Luxemburg, Spain, and Belgium — spend the least on their defense, while all of the Baltic states and Poland, located near the Russian border, have exceeded the threshold set by NATO.
“All of the Alliance members won’t be able to reach 2%,” military expert Pavel Luzin says. “But the key countries have already either done it or will achieve the goal in the next couple of years, seeing as the Russian threat is quite real.”
On 5 July, NATO member states signed protocols on Finland and Sweden joining the North Atlantic Treaty. Both countries will be able to join the Alliance as soon as all of the existing members ratify the protocols. Out of the 30 members, only Turkey and Hungary are yet to do so.
“De facto, Sweden and Finland are already members of the Alliance,” Luzin says. “De jure, they will become members even if Turkey continues throwing a spanner in the works, seeing as for these countries a direct Russian threat exists. NATO is their guarantee of strengthening defense.”
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