Russia is charging families of dead soldiers $1,500 to get their bodies back, human-rights group claims

Russian marines during the International Army Games at the Khmelevka firing ground in the Kaliningrad region on August 17, 2022. REUTERS/Vitaly Nevar

A Ukrainian human-rights group says Russian commanders are charging families to retrieve remains.

Crimea SOS accused the Russians of charging some $1,500 to bring the bodies of dead soldiers home.

The commanders said the bodies were in "inconvenient" locations, per Crimea SOS.

A Ukrainian human-rights organization says some Russian commanders are charging the families of dead soldiers to bring their remains home.

Crimea SOS, a Ukraine-based NGO, posted a report on its website on Thursday saying it has evidence of three to four such cases. It didn't share the evidence itself.

The bodies were being kept at a morgue in Simferopol, the second-largest city in Russian-occupied Crimea, the group said, alleging that Russian military officials were demanding payment to send them back.

It said the relatives had to pay between 100,000 and 150,0000 rubles — between $1,000 and $1,500 — to get their loved ones back.

"The commissars justify such a scheme by saying the body is in an inconvenient location for transportation," the report read.

Insider was unable to independently verify the claim. However, there have been reported instances of Russian army officers being accused of mishandling the bodies of their dead troops.

An ex-convict Russian soldier identified only as Aleksandr told The New York Times that he had been ordered not to collect the bodies of his comrades. He said this was because officers wanted to register the dead men as "missing in action" so they wouldn't have to pay compensation to their families.

"There were bodies everywhere," Aleksandr said to the Times. "No one was interested in collecting them."

Russia has hardly given any statistics for its number of war dead. Russia's defense minister Sergei Shoigu claimed in September 2022 — almost a year ago — that 6,000 Russian soldiers died in the first six months of the war.

Researchers working with the BBC said in August that more than 30,000 dead Russian soldiers had been identified by name, suggesting an overall death toll far larger.

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