Message From the Russian Military: ‘We Lost Your Son’

For months, Elvira Kaipova had not heard from her son Rafael, a Russian soldier deployed in Ukraine.

Navy officers responded to her repeated questions on his whereabouts by saying he was on lively responsibility and due to this fact incommunicado. Then, late final November, two days after they once more made that assertion, she realized that he’d gone lacking on Nov. 1 — from a Telegram channel that helps army households.

“We misplaced your son,” Aleksandr Sokolov, the officer in Rafael’s unit in command of household liaison, informed her when she traveled to its headquarters in western Russia.

“Misplaced him how?” she says she responded, alarmed and indignant, particularly when the officer defined that after Rafael had didn’t verify in by radio, a search had proved unimaginable. “How will we seek for him?” she says the officer informed her.

Variations on that grim situation have been repeated numerous instances since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The Russian Ministry of Protection lacks any formal, organized effort to trace down legions of lacking troopers, in line with bereaved households, personal organizations that attempt to help them and army analysts. Family members, caught in limbo, fend for themselves with scant authorities data.

The ministry itself declined to remark for this text. Mr. Sokolov, the liaison officer, mentioned in a textual content message: “You do notice that I can’t touch upon something.”

Even when Russia and Ukraine attain a peace settlement, the hunt for lacking troopers is anticipated to endure for years, if not a long time.

The protection ministry has not printed any statistics in regards to the variety of lacking, which army analysts and households say is as a result of it doesn’t know the quantity. Estimates run to the tens of 1000’s.

Anna Tsivilyova, a deputy minister of protection and a cousin of President Vladimir V. Putin, informed the State Duma final November that 48,000 kin of the lacking had submitted DNA samples in hope of figuring out stays, though that included some duplicate requests from the identical household.

In Ukraine, “Wish to Discover,” a authorities undertaking to assist find Russian servicemen captured or killed there, mentioned it had acquired greater than 88,000 requests for data, with over 9,000 in April alone. It famous that the general variety of lacking remains to be unknown.

The Worldwide Committee of the Crimson Cross, which tries to find lacking from either side, whether or not civilians or army, has 110,000 instances submitted.

The household of Isakhanov Ravazan, a 25-year-old soldier, final acquired a short voice message from him on Nov. 9. Throughout a battle quickly afterward, his aunt mentioned, he radioed his commander that he couldn’t stanch the bleeding from a foul wound. He has not been heard from since.

“Nobody noticed him lifeless,” mentioned his aunt, who, like a number of folks on this article, didn’t need to be named for concern of falling afoul of legal guidelines in opposition to detailing battlefield losses. “Possibly he saved himself, perhaps somebody discovered him, we’re nonetheless holding onto hope that he’s alive,” she mentioned. “There is no such thing as a peace for the soul. I can not sleep at evening, and neither can his mother and father.”

Most lacking troopers doubtless died combating and had been deserted on the battlefield, specialists mentioned. There usually are not sufficient groups to gather our bodies, and the fixed deployment of drones makes retrieval too harmful.

Commanders have sufficient hassle delivering meals and ammunition, and that’s the precedence, mentioned a army analyst with the Battle Intelligence Crew, an impartial group in exile that tracks the battle. The analyst, who declined to make use of his title to keep away from jeopardizing kin nonetheless in Russia, mentioned solely households of the troopers care if our bodies are collected, “and there’s no punishment for alienating kin.”

A Ukrainian man from the occupied metropolis of Luhansk, who was dragooned into service as a battlefield medic and who additionally declined to be recognized, mentioned of his expertise: “Lots of of individuals had been left mendacity on the market. Each day, dozens had been wounded or killed.”

Even when our bodies are retrieved, identification is problematic. Usually stays could be eliminated solely after the battle strains shift markedly in order that assault drones fly elsewhere, and that would take months and even years.

The army morgue within the western metropolis of Rostov, formally referred to as the Middle for the Reception, Processing and Dispatch of the Deceased, is the principle clearing middle.

When she realized that her son was lacking, Ms. Kaipova, who’s married and has one different son, flew there first. “All the pieces is overcrowded,” she mentioned, arriving at 7 a.m. to submit a DNA pattern and leaving at 10 p.m. “Wives, moms, fathers — all crying, sobbing, ready.”

Investigators there informed her and others that they face a backlog of round 15,000 unidentified servicemen. The sluggish tempo, the fixed referrals to totally different authorities companies and the shortage of fundamental data has households of the lacking on a gradual boil. Anger overflows from quite a few on-line chat rooms the place kin search assist.

In a single touch upon the Vkontakte social community, a participant named Polina Medvedeva lambasted army commanders as “irresponsible.” A few of her husband’s comrades informed her that he had died heroically, she wrote, however the army has not confirmed his loss of life and there’s no physique.

“The place are the specifics?” she wrote. “Why is the command ignoring us, avoiding solutions, throwing us from one quantity to a different? My coronary heart breaks with ache and anger for what they’ve executed to our household.”

Some households go much more public.

Family members of lacking troopers from the twenty fifth Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade from the Leningrad area have made repeated appeals to Mr. Putin.

“All over the place we encounter indifference!” they mentioned in a video final month exhibiting photos of the lacking. Each household receives precisely the identical kind letter and is simply informed, repeatedly, to attend, they mentioned, “Assist us! We’re bored with dwelling in ignorance for months and years!”

The Kremlin established the Defenders of the Fatherland State Basis, ostensibly to assist troopers, veterans and their households. However it has no inside monitor on particulars in regards to the lacking, analysts mentioned.

There may be “no system of liaison with the troopers’ households,” mentioned Sergei Krivenko, the director of a human rights group fashioned to assist troopers. He known as the Fatherland Basis a “pretend construction,” designed to deflect blame from the protection ministry and “to offer a semblance of motion.”

The Fatherland Basis didn’t reply to requests for remark.

Ms. Kaipova has written to quite a few officers beginning with Mr. Putin, visited his administrative workplace and searched via a number of hospitals, together with some amid the combating in japanese Ukraine. “I run in circles,” she mentioned.

Her quest took a not unusual flip when she thought she acknowledged Rafael with a grievous head wound in a brief video clip filmed aboard an evacuation helicopter. She is satisfied he’s mendacity in a hospital someplace with amnesia.

The administrator of 1 chat group the place she posted the video mentioned at the least 20 different folks recognized the identical man as their lacking soldier.

“Everyone seems to be so determined that they see their family members in any face,” Ms. Kaipova conceded, however dismissed any suggestion that this may be the case for her as effectively. Her son’s unit mentioned its medics don’t have any report of evacuating him.

Rafael was a reluctant soldier. Raised within the central metropolis of Tyumen, he critically injured one other man who tried to take his automobile. Officers offered him with a standard selection in Russian felony instances: Go to jail or to the entrance. His mom begged him to selected jail, however he recoiled. “He was in agony, pacing,” she mentioned. “He didn’t need struggle or jail.”

He deployed final Aug. 1, his twentieth birthday. She by no means heard from him once more. A hospitalized soldier from his unit as soon as known as to inform her that Rafael had cried out for his mom in concern at the beginning of his first battle.

She realized from Type 1421, the terse army report of his disappearance, that he served with an intelligence unit. Rafael was amongst a bunch of troopers finishing up “particular duties” in a Donetsk province village, it mentioned, after they got here below fireplace from artillery and drones. “The group, which included Rafael Kaipov, misplaced contact after this engagement.”

Underneath new legal guidelines, commanding officers can go to court docket simply six months after the final contact with a soldier to have him declared lacking, permitting them to halt his fight pay.

The households themselves need to file a further case to have the lacking soldier declared lifeless, which releases hefty advantages. Some shun such a definitive step.

“I cry always, morning and evening,” Ms. Kaipova mentioned. “My greatest concern is that I’ll exhaust each lead and have nobody left to show to.”

Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting.