Report: Expansion of Russian cemeteries doubled since the beginning of the Ukraine war

• According to the Moscow Times, Russia is spending more than twice as much on expanding its cemeteries as it did in 2020.
• Thousands of Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine, partly due to mass deployment and high attrition.
• However, the Ukraine war is not the only reason for this development, said a demographer.

According to the Moscow Times, in the first two years of its large-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia more than doubled its spending on expanding cemeteries compared to the previous two years.

The newspaper cited data from the Kremlin’s official state procurement portal.

It was reported that Russian regions spent over $2.5 million on expanding cemeteries in 2023 and about $1.3 million in 2022, for a total of about $3.8 million.

In the first half of 2024, they spent a total of $1.5 million, it said.

In comparison, cemetery expansion projects cost only $432,000 in 2020 and $1.4 million in 2021.

Russia has suffered increasing casualties since the start of the large-scale invasion in February 2022.

The British Ministry of Defence reported in March that there were an average of almost 1,000 casualties per day in Russia in February, including both killed and wounded soldiers, likely due to Russia’s exhausting war.

Last year, the independent Russian media Important Stories and the Conflict Intelligence Team estimated that the life expectancy of Russian soldiers on the battlefield is about four and a half months.

In February, the Institute for War Research stated that more Russian soldiers probably died in the capture of the city of Avdiivka than in the entire ten-year Soviet-Afghan war.

Ukrainian military officials estimated that up to 47,000 Russians were killed or injured in the fighting there.

And in an intelligence update released late last year, the British Ministry of Defence estimated that Russia may have suffered up to 290,000 soldiers killed or wounded since the conflict began.

Satellite images of Russian burial sites from Maxar Technologies, a private U.S. satellite company, provided to Business Insider in February, show that new grids of burial sites emerged as the war progressed.

However, according to demographer Yan Bride, the conflict in Ukraine is only one of the factors contributing to the expansion of cemeteries.

Bride told the Moscow Times that natural causes such as an ageing population, alcohol-related deaths and a rising number of deaths among young people also played a role.

“The increase in deaths at younger ages has also led to a growing demand for funeral services to reach new areas,” he said.