Russia is running out of cemeteries and crematoriums, a State Duma Deputy Chair has said, amid Pentagon estimates that Moscow has suffered more than 600,000 deaths in its war with Ukraine.
The country is struggling to keep up with demand for cemeteries and crematoriums, said Svetlana Razvorotneva, the Deputy Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Construction and Housing and Utilities, in the State Duma, which is the lower house of Russia’s national legislature.
She said that the main issue is federal law only allowing “municipal organizations” to be involved in burials, according to Komsomolskaya Pravda, translated from Russian, which cites an interview in another newspaper, Parlamentskaya Gazeta.
“It is impossible to create any private cemeteries, crematoriums, or other ritual facilities; it is impossible to attract capital and investment to this area from outside, other than state ones,” she said, “And yet they are very much needed.”
The Parlamentskaya Gazeta interview now appears online in abbreviated form, with the word “cemeteries” removed.
Razvorotneva said the law, adopted in 1996, is outdated and no longer able to meet Russia’s needs.
“The need for crematoriums is very high today,” she said, adding that this is an especially serious issue in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, meaning people are sometimes forced to travel outside of these cities to use cremation services elsewhere.
There is only one crematorium per five million Russians today, the Parlamentskaya Gazeta reports.
Razvorotneva’s comments come as a senior U.S. Department of Defense official said it is believed Ukraine has inflicted more than 600,000 casualties on Russian forces.
“Russian losses, again, both killed and wounded in action in just the first year of the war exceeded the total of all Russian losses, or Soviet losses in any conflict since World War II combined,” the official said on Wednesday.
“It’s kind of the Russian way of war where they continue to throw mass into the into the problem, and I think we’ll continue to see high losses.”
September saw the highest number of Russian casualties reported in a single month since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the U.K. Defense Ministry said this week.
Putin could soon be facing a manpower dilemma, as Moscow has taken to relying on personnel-heavy attacks with high casualty counts as it slowly but steadily advances in eastern Ukraine.
Russia pulls together its military from a number of sources, with the majority conscripted and typically serving around a year.
However, a significant number of personnel sign up for contracts with the Ministry of Defense.
Source: https://www.newsweek.com/russia-moscow-running-out-cemeteries-1967497