1/ At least 250 Russian soldiers a day are being declared missing or dead by the courts, equivalent to the declared daily losses of the Russian army at the front. Although at least 50,000 men are missing, the Russian government is doing little to help relatives. ⬇️ 
2/ Mediazona and Meduza report that by the beginning of August 2025, families of missing soldiers had filed about 50,000 claims to declare their relatives dead, so that they can obtain compensation. The vast majority of the missing are indeed likely to be deceased.
3/ The number of missing is almost certainly far higher than 50,000, due to a number of factors highlighted by Russian warblogger Anastasia Kashevarova. She complains that even now, the Russian military does not have a proper system for tracking them:
4/ "There is still no system for searching for missing persons and there is no single verified database. There are many problems in this issue, as it affects all aspects of the activities of the Ministry of Defence:
5/ "1. Lack of and low level of evacuation. The problem of missing persons is directly related to the problem of evacuation. The wounded need to get to the evacuation point, which is sometimes several kilometres away. And 300 [missing] turns into 200 [dead].
6/ "Evacuation is further complicated by a serious shortage of personnel at the front — there are very few evacuation teams. Evacuation teams are sent into combat.
7/ "And as troops advance, there is also the problem of collecting bodies; they are left lying there because the fighting must continue and there is no one to collect the bodies.
8/ "2. Inaccessibility of evacuation. Often, bodies cannot be evacuated because they are located in territory controlled by the enemy (and the news reported that we had taken the settlement, but in fact we had not).
9/ "Either the bodies are mined or they lie under rubble and require special equipment, but as soon as the equipment arrives and work begins, enemy drones and shells arrive.
10/ "3. Lack of coordination between the Ministry of Defence, military registration and enlistment offices, military police, the Military Prosecutor's Office, and the Defenders of the Fatherland [FZO, a veterans' and families' support organisation],…
11/ …and the absence of a unified database and integrated support system/service. On any given day, a soldier's family may receive 3-4 different statuses about him: ‘in service,’ ‘missing in action,’ ‘killed in action,’ ‘captured,’ ‘AWOL.’
12/ "Also, the agencies do not delve into each individual story (it is not difficult to do, the main thing is desire and skill — the three of us can handle it).
13/ "The human rights ombudsman and military police consider the dead to be prisoners of war, while military units recognise soldiers in captivity based on deepfakes.
14/ "The Ministry of Defence hotline operates completely separately, is extremely difficult to reach, and even if you do manage to get through, the percentage of assistance and reliable information you receive from them is close to zero.
15/ "4. Lack of well-coordinated work by government agencies with the families of participants in the Special Military Operation.
16/ "The problem is not only in the military registration and enlistment offices and military units, where people are sent, they are not given an explanation of the procedure when a soldier's status changes to missing, captured or killed.
17/ "Civilian authorities could also help with this. But no one knows this procedure. There are no instructions.
18/ "In the FZO, in military units, in military registration and enlistment offices, in the MFC [Multifunctional Centre – local public service provider], in the SFR [Social Fund of Russia] – brochures on the procedure for each situation need to be distributed.
19/ "When signing a contract, [they should] immediately give the soldier a brochure on what to do if [something happens]...
20/ "5. Families' reluctance to go to the authorities. 90% of those who contacted us about missing persons did not go to the military registration and enlistment office, did not obtain an extract from the order on the soldier's status, and did not submit DNA samples.
21/ "Many do not even know the soldier's military unit and division. And those who know or have found out dump all the data into the public domain.
22/ "An infantile authority that remains silent breeds an infantile society that does not want to follow the legal system but looks for easy shortcuts. So that someone else will do it for them.
23/ "People are illiterate in this regard, and they are also confused: a man went to the military registration office, mumbled something, was sent away, and went to consult fortune tellers, fake lawyers, swindlers, and the enemy.
24/ "Everything that is currently being done to inform and protect the rights of the population since the beginning of the Special Military Operation is the service of civil society.
25/ "The authorities are not just breathing down our necks, they are lagging far behind in this regard, showering the poor with money and privileges, which is backfiring on the state.
26/ "We need to get things working, provide ideological education, build all the structures, and it's time to stop being jealous that volunteers are doing better in some areas and start involving them in this work." /end
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