In Russian cemetery, sea of crosses signals war’s true toll
BAKINSKAYA, RUSSIA>> It was a lonely funeral. Four narrow caskets, recently pulled from the back of a covered truck, rested on stands under an insistent snowfall as an Orthodox priest performed last rites. Three gravediggers in tattered jackets looked on with their hands folded solemnly. An excavator was parked close by, ready to dig more graves.
“Lord have mercy,” the priest chanted as he blessed the bodies of fallen Russian soldiers with incense, his cassock buffeted by a freezing wind.
Once those corpses were lowered, four more dead soldiers in crimson- covered caskets were sung their last rites.
This is the final resting place for many of the men who lost their lives fighting for the private mercenary force known as Wagner, which has been leading the Russian military effort in the months-long battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
Wagner’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a tycoon who has a close relationship with President Vladimir Putin, has lauded his force as “probably the most experienced army in the world today.”
But the rapidly growing cemetery in Bakinskaya, a town near the Black Sea, is evidence that his mercenary army — which includes many poorly trained ex- convicts — is sustaining tremendous battlefield losses. On a recent weekday, nine men had their remains interred at this relatively new cemetery, established for Wagner recruits who had indicated that they preferred to be buried there.
Late last year, activists were tipped off about the heightened activity at this gravesite, which lies adjacent to a cemetery used by the local community. Then, it contained about 50 graves. Now, it has about 300, and those observing the cemetery say four to eight soldiers are being buried per day, on average; local media estimates are even higher, reporting as many as 16 graves per day.
Almost all the graves, sheathed in fresh snow, were identical, although occasionally a slim Muslim headstone stood at the head of the grave, rather than an Orthodox cross. Each has a wreath of plastic flowers in the style of the Wagner logo — red, yellow and black with a golden star in the middle. Only one, the grave of Andrey V. Orlov, who died Dec. 15 at age 28, had a photograph, and an extra wreath of flowers.
Burials here were gaining little notice until late December, when an anti-war activist, Vitaly V. Wotanovsky, started publishing images of the cemetery, including the names and dates of birth of the dead, on his Telegram channel. Ten days later, on New Year’s Day, photographs of Prigozhin laying flowers on the graves emerged.
Casualties began to increase, Wotanovsky said, as the battle for Bakhmut and the nearby village of Soledar intensified.
“Since November, the number of deaths has increased dramatically,” Wotanovsky, 51, said in an interview at his home in the nearby city of Krasnodar. In the past he had counted about four burials a day, he said, but noted that on one recent day there were 11.
Wotanovsky, who has spent 20 days in detention since the invasion began because of his anti-war activities, has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of his region’s cemeteries. He collects tips from local residents and keeps a running tally of the war dead buried in the area and posts pictures of the grave mark
ers on his Telegram channel. He said that informing the public about the names and identities of the fallen was his only way to protest and to try to change public opinion.
“This is the only normal, legal way to tell people that war is death, that it is bad, so that they somehow reflect on it in their heads,” said Wotanovsky, a Russian army veteran who spent years working for the military as a radio engineer.
Many of the Wagner fighters buried in Bakinskaya had been convicted of crimes, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Western intelligence agencies, the Ukrainian government and a prisoners’ rights association, Russia Behind Bars, estimate that about 40,000 inmates have joined the Russian forces since July — about 10% of the country’s prison population.
Ukrainian officials have claimed that nearly 30,000 of them have deserted or been killed or wounded, but that number could not be verified independently.
One of the gravediggers took pride in pointing out to visiting journalists that the caskets were placed not on the ground but on individual stands “in a dignified manner.”
Some observers have speculated that the graveyard is a public relations ploy by Prigozhin, who is increasingly seeking credit for capturing Ukrainian territory and is believed to harbor political ambitions.
“Unlike the general tendency in Russia, which is to try to minimize casualties and downplay the loss of life, Prigozhin is trying to promote the military heroismand sacrifice” of his soldiers, said Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at RUSI, a defense think tank in Britain, who studies the group.
Thirty minutes down the highway is themolkino base, which observers say has been a training camp for Wagner soldiers since 2015. According to Russian media reports, the Ministry of Defense has spent at least $13.6million developing the training facility.
The base is off limits to civilians, but soldiers were the main customers at several cafes, fast-food joints and a convenience store.
One soldier, who gave his name as Abkhat, said he was from the Samara region, near the border with Kazakhstan, and that he was being dispatched to Ukraine that evening.
He said he was 30 and that he “volunteered not for the money, but out of love for my country.”
In the regional capital of Krasnodar, a city of 900,000 people, the war is never far away. Civil aviation has been suspended since Feb. 24 of last year, the day Russia invaded, and fighter jets fly training missions overhead, complementing the ongoing tactical exercises at Molkino.
The Krasnodar area, with the third-biggest population of Russia’s 85 regions, has the second-highest number of cases for “discrediting the Russian army,” a common charge made against anyone who expresses opposition to the war. A repeat offense can mean up to 10 years in jail.
Despite the intimidating climate, Wotanovsky’s close friend, Viktor V. Chirikov, also an army veteran, believes that the simple act of posting about the dead eventually will bring about not only an end to the war but the collapse of the system Putin built.
“Do you know why the Russian Empire fell?” he said in Wotanovsky’s kitchen.
“Because of the number of coffins coming back from the First World War fronts to the villages where the fallen lived.”