Russia Hiding War Casualties, Activists Charge

Russian forces in Chechnya, facing increasingly tough resistance from guerrilla fighters, are systematically underreporting their losses to prevent public opinion from turning against the war, a prominent mothers group charged Monday.

The Soldiers’ Mothers Committee, Russia’s most active antiwar organization, said it estimates that more than 3,000 Russian soldiers have died in the 15-week war--more than four times the official count. The group also contends that at least 5,000 Russian soldiers have been wounded, about twice the government figure.

“The Russian armed forces are telling lies and are underreporting their losses in Chechnya,” said Maria G. Fedulova, a leader of the Soldiers’ Mothers Committee in Moscow. “The general staff deliberately conceals federal losses. They consider these figures to be classified information.”

The Soldiers’ Mothers Committee is Russia’s largest grass-roots organization and is widely respected for its independence and integrity. The charge that the military is understating the body count is echoed by soldiers coming back from the war and, on rare occasions, by the Russian press.

“Reports about low losses on the federal side and tremendous losses on the Chechen side are nothing but a figment of generals’ imagination,” said Alexander Burnayev, 20, who served in an artillery regiment in Chechnya for 40 days last fall. “The generals can’t explain why they lose so many soldiers. If they did, the people would immediately stop supporting this war.”

The war against separatist Chechen rebels has contributed greatly to the popularity of Vladimir V. Putin, who as prime minister and now as acting president has pressed Russia’s war effort. The appearance of success by Russian troops is considered key to his chance of winning election to the presidency March 26.

In recent days, the Russian push into Chechen-controlled territory has slowed as federal soldiers have run into fierce opposition, especially in the central area of Grozny, the capital. Even so, Russian generals continue to project optimism and say their slow advance is protecting the lives of their men.

The government issued a statement Monday denying that it is underreporting casualties and charging that such reports “were lies viciously spread by certain media outlets.”

The Russian military has consistently reported numerous Chechen casualties for every Russian soldier killed or wounded.

Russia lost a bloody 20-month war to separatists in the tiny Chechen republic in 1996. The conflict claimed an estimated 80,000 lives, most of them civilians. On the Russian side, many of the dead were poorly trained draftees sent into battle against hardened guerrilla fighters.

The Soldiers’ Mothers Committee rose to prominence when it led opposition to the first Chechen war. Some mothers in the group went to Chechnya, yanked their boys from their regiments and took them home. Others scoured Chechnya’s battlefields for months looking for their missing sons.

Last October, after Chechen rebels invaded the neighboring republic of Dagestan, Russia sent troops back into Chechnya to destroy what the government calls “terrorists and bandits.”

This time around, Russian generals have tried to show that they learned the lessons of the first conflict--including the need for strict control over information.

“There has never been an official list of losses in the previous Chechen war, and there will be none this time, either,” Fedulova said. “The generals prefer to hold the truth back in order to save their own reputations and preserve public support for the war.”

She said the Soldiers’ Mothers Committee conducted its own count of the casualties by surveying its branch offices, which are located in most of Russia’s 89 regions. Mothers in each region tallied the number of soldiers who had gone off to war and been reported killed or wounded.

Only one region reported fewer than 40 deaths and some reported 50 or more. Based on the survey, the committee estimated the number of soldiers’ deaths at 3,000 to 3,500 and the number of wounded at 5,000 to 6,000.

The latest official Russian military death toll, also issued last week, was 741. The government put the number of its wounded at 2,233.

In an unusually critical report on Jan. 14, the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda estimated the death toll at 1,300 and the number of wounded at 5,000.

“We are not being told what is really happening in Chechnya,” Fedulova said. “The military command thinks that there is nothing wrong with drafting these young rookies and then sending them to die in faraway Chechnya. But problems immediately arise when it comes to revealing the figures on losses to the public.”

Burnayev, the veteran of the Chechen conflict, said the Russian military machine runs on fear, and officers who lose too many soldiers try to make themselves look better by reporting fewer casualties.

One technique, he said, is to label some dead soldiers missing in action and leave their bodies behind.

“The trick of substituting MIA for KIA is the favorite one,” he said. “A human life is still absolutely worthless in the Russian armed forces. Top commanders have never cared about servicemen and have always treated soldiers as disposable. For them, it is as easy to write off a soldier as to throw away a used bus ticket.”

Alexander Borovik, 25, who served in Chechnya until he was wounded and sent home in November, said soldiers were not told how many of their comrades fell in battle.

“Soldiers would always find out about losses from the medics they personally knew,” he said. “We had to go around and ask about our friends we did not see among us.”

On one occasion, he said, a high-ranking general came for inspection and an officer announced that his unit had lost 35 people. After the general left, some of the soldiers tried to recall all the men they knew who had been killed. “The total was almost twice as much--well over 60 people,” he said. “And those were only the soldiers we could remember.”

The underreporting of casualties, Borovik concluded, is because of politics. “If the losses are high, then the feeling of triumph is not that pure. And the authorities can’t allow this. They need a clean victory in the coming elections. As for the truth, the Russian society doesn’t need it, really. No one wants the truth here--not the military, not the politicians, not the people.”

Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.