Ken V,
Russian president Vladimir Putin has decreed that all Russian casualties “in peacetime” be a state secret. In addition to criminal charges arising from divulging state secrets, families risk losing pensions and lump-sum payments if they reveal that their sons were killed in Ukraine. Mothers of soldiers’ associations have been branded “foreign agents” for collecting data on Russian casualties. Dissident Boris Nemtsov was murdered shortly before completing his study of Russian casualties in Ukraine. Russian civil rights organizations, working against the fog of official resistance, could confirm only several hundred battlefield deaths.
Read any of the books about BRIXMIS and there activities in East Germany during the Cold War. They used to rummage around waste dumps outside military hospitals during the time the Russians were in Afghanistan finding all sort of evidence about what weapons were used there. The Russians used to evacuate their injured into the DDR before they were sent back home. far less evidence of what was happening.