Moscow Issues Mass Grave Construction Guide as Troop Losses Top 700,000

The Kremlin has begun distributing an updated instruction manual to military units engaged in its war in Ukraine on the preparation and maintenance of mass graves. The directives arrived a few days before Ukraine’s military reported on Monday that Moscow had suffered the loss of 1,300 personnel on Sunday, which took the total number of casualties since the start of the 2022 full-scale invasion to 700,390.

The 20-page textbook titled, “Civil Defense: Urgent burials of corpses in wartime,” was produced by Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Services and is an updated version of one issued a few months prior to the February 2022 full-scale invasion; the earlier version was said to be intended for dealing with large scale fatalities following an attack on Russia. The new version is not quite so coy, with the front cover showing an emergency worker in a protective suit and helmet standing in front of a helicopter.

The booklet is filled with detailed instructions and diagrams detailing the size of mass graves, the construction of the pits, tables showing lists of equipment and the manpower needed to construct a 100-person burial. The manual specifies that such a grave must be 20 meters (65.6 feet) long, three meters (10 feet) wide and 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) deep. It estimates that this would take more than 350 man-hours to complete.

It provides details of how many body bags should be laid at each level with each layer being covered with earth before the next layer is positioned and how much earth should be used to close the grave. It also specifies the use of “chimneys” to allow the gases of decomposing bodies to be released to avoid a possible buildup of explosive fumes.

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The textbook also stipulates circumstances under which bodies should be cremated and what equipment and techniques are to be used so as to minimize the risk of chemical, biological, or radiological contamination.

Russian forces have suffered an average of about 1,200 casualties daily for most of 2024 as a result of its tactic of using infantry “meat assaults” in attempts to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses. US officials told The New York Times that September was the bloodiest month of the war as Moscow has tried to capitalize on perceived shortages in manpower and ammunition suffered by Ukraine.

On Saturday, Oct. 2 Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said that Ukraine was “holding back one of the most powerful Russian offensives” it had experienced since the start of the war.

Russia has not updated figures for its casualties since September 2022 when it claimed to have lost under 6,000 troops. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government has been similarly reticent to declare casualty levels.

While mass graves of civilians murdered by Russia have been discovered in Ukrainian cities and towns including Mariupol and Bucha, the only documented discovery of mass graves to bury Russian soldiers has been in liberated areas in the occupied parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.