In December 2022, the Russian Pension Fund classified data on payments to the families of participants in the war against Ukraine, including those who died, as revealed by the Russian media "Important Stories."
The media shared a relevant letter from the leadership of the Pension Fund, distributed to employees of regional departments. The letter contains instructions not to upload data on social payments related to participants in the so-called "special military operation" (the official Russian term for the war) to the Unified State Information System for Social Security, as well as to delete previously uploaded information.
The publication notes that among the information the fund prohibited from publishing is the number of "widows of military personnel who died during military service" receiving support, and that this data could help reveal the scale of losses in the Russian army in the war against Ukraine.
Russia and Ukraine provide very little information about their losses in the war. Moscow officially last reported the number of killed over a year ago, and Kyiv has not done so, stating that the data will be disclosed after the war.
In December, British intelligence noted an increase in the pace of Russian forces' losses in the war against Ukraine in 2023 and predicted that at such rates, Russia would have over half a million killed and wounded by 2025. "This is compared to the 70,000 losses of the Soviet Union in the nine-year Soviet-Afghan war," the statement said.
