MAR 4, 2022
'They Don't Want To Cause Panic': As War In Ukraine Rages, Russians Begin Grieving Over Dead Soldiers (rferl.org)
OZYORNOYE, Russia --
[...]
A conscript, Khanygin died in the early hours of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24 -- the day before his 22nd birthday.
[...]
"Everyone is asking, 'When? When? When?,'" Khanygin's grandmother Natalya told RFE/RL, referring to the funeral plans.
"But we don't know when. A military representative came and said they will not bring my grandson home until after the 'special operation' is finished," she said, the wording the Russian authorities use -- and are pressuring all Russians to use -- to refer to the unprovoked war that has killed thousands of soldiers and Ukrainian civilians. "They don't want to cause panic."
[...]
Word of Khanygin's death came to his family in Ozyornoye on February 25, when the head of the regional military office called his mother, Lyudmila Khangyina, with the news.
"During the day on Friday, my youngest grandson, Fyodor, came running to me and shouted: 'Grandma, come quickly. Mama has fainted. Maksim is dead!,'" Natalya said.
Written
notification came shortly afterward.
[...]
On March 3, a veterans' group
reported the death in combat near the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol of Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky, one of Russia's most decorated and experienced combat officers.
[...]
On March 2, local authorities said on
Instagram that 31-year-old Ali Batyrov, a native of the settlement of Batazhnoye in the southwestern region of Astrakhan, was killed in Ukraine on February 28. He held the rank of major, had been wounded and decorated in Syria, was a battalion commander, and left behind a widow and children.
The same day, officials in the Selenginsky district of Buryatia
reported the death in Ukraine of Lieutenant Ilya Semyonov, who was also a veteran of the war in Syria, where Russia has given government forces crucial military support since 2015.
[...]
Galina Zinoviyeva lives in the village of Nizhny Ures, in Tatarstan. She hasn't heard from her serviceman son, 21-year-old Maksim, since January 28, when he reported that
he had arrived in Belarus for exercises. He was due to return to his home base on February 20 -- the last scheduled day of
the drills in Belarus, which lies north of Ukraine and has been a staging ground for the Russian invasion.
[...]
That gave me pause and it really worries me.
️A missile fragment, presumably from a Russian missile, falls in the yard of Zelensky's state dacha near Kyiv.
