1/ So many Russian soldiers have been killed in the Irkutsk region that the local authorities have run out of money to transport them back to their relatives. Local people are now having to crowd-fund for body bags and the transportation of corpses. ⬇️ 
2/ Russia's Ministry of Defence transports the bodies of dead soldiers free of charge to airfields capable of handling military transport planes. However, these may be hundreds of kilometers from where the relatives live, necessitating the use of ground transportation as well.
3/ The responsibility for doing this originally lay with regional authorities but was transferred to municipalities earlier in 2024. The cost was covered in the Irkutsk region by the 'Zvezvda' fund, but this has passed to municipal educational funds – which have run out of money.
4/ Relatives and local activists are appealing for donations in the social media group for the city of Ust-Kut, 300 km from the nearest military airfield at Bratsk. People in the Kirensky district, a similar distance from Bratsk, are also appealing for help.
5/ According to the head of the 'Continent' educational fund, at least 63 people from the Ust-Kut district have died in the Ukraine war, 41 of them this year alone. Other relatives are appealing for money to send body bags to the front, so that the dead can be recovered.
6/ The wife of a mobilised soldier wrote that she was "appealing for help, not for judgment." She explained that the money for bags was being asked for by the military, who were "lifting bodies." It appears that the Russian MOD is providing little help in recovering the dead.
7/ "We need a large number of pathological bags for evacuations! It will take a long time to wait for them to be provided. When leaving for evacuation, they may take the usual number, but in reality it will turn out that there are more than usual," she wrote on social media. /end
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