Inside Russia's grim morgue: Silence amid staggering losses

The darkest and gloomiest place on Earth – this is how Russian independent journalist Alexey Kovalev describes the "central processing facility for the remains of fallen soldiers," established by the army in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. Photos published on social media from this military morgue show hundreds of bodies in various stages of decomposition and limbs scattered across hallway floors, waiting to be matched with other body parts.

"In wooden crates lined along the walls from floor to ceiling, row after row, are the lucky ones: those whose bodies have been identified, placed in coffins, and prepared to be sent to their mourning relatives in the farthest corners of Russia," writes Kovalev in an article for "Foreign Policy."

According to the journalist, "judging by the overload of the military morgue," Ukraine's reports that Russia is losing 1,500 soldiers per day are not exaggerated. The Russian does not sympathise with the dead. He describes that "the corpses from the morgue and the rotting bodies uncollected from the fields is a consciously accepted way of waging war by the Kremlin."

- The Russian disdain for human life extends to their own troops, which the Kremlin systematically uses in so-called human wave attacks and meat grinder tactics. Secondly, mass death among Russian soldiers has become part of an increasingly clear policy with which the Kremlin aims to rid Russia of undesirable elements and change the structure of the Russian population, comments the Russian journalist.

According to Kovalev's analysis, "non-Russian ethnic minorities like Buryats, Tatars, Tuvans, as well as prisoners, who are sent to the most bloody sections of the front," mostly die in the war. They are sent into attacks until the Ukrainian defenders jam or run out of ammunition. Meanwhile, the Kremlin tries to spare "politically important populations of Moscow and St Petersburg."

- These shocking reports from Russia do not upset Russians at all. Anyone expecting a Russian anti-war uprising is mistaken. There will be no awakening of Russian society; no shocking views will move them, comments Dr Wojciech Siegień from the University of Gdańsk, an expert in Russian propaganda analysis and author of the podcast "Eastern Bloc" on Krytyka Polityczna, in a conversation with WP.

- There is a Soviet term "obrabotka," which means working on society's views. We've reached a stage where nothing can shake Russian society anymore. The paradox of this war is that people from Siberia are dying in Ukraine, believing they are defending their homeland. As if they were truly threatened by NATO troops coming to their cities, adds Dr Siegień.

Dr Siegień notes that not even the theory presented by Russian parliamentarian Alexander Borodai upset the Russians. He confirmed that the recording released two weeks ago, in which he explained that "useless people, of low social value" are dying in Ukraine, is true. Borodai described that everything is fine because it is about "opposing unnecessary manpower to the bravest people from Ukraine and thus exhausting the enemy society to the maximum."

The outcome of the war depends on the West's willingness to continue supporting Ukraine and the Russian economy's exhaustion. Both sides are waiting for a breakthrough related to Joe Biden's latest moves and Donald Trump's taking office, summarises Dr Siegień.

With an estimated rate of 1,500 casualties per day (killed and wounded), October was the bloodiest month of the war for Russia. Vladimir Putin throws everything he has into battle. Russian unofficial estimates of the number of dead range from 115,000 to 160,000, which is over 10 times more than the Soviet Union's death toll in the Afghan war.

The total number of Russian casualties, including the wounded, is estimated at about 800,000 people. According to Russian journalist Anastasia Kashavarova, the average Russian infantryman lasts less than a month on the front line before being killed.