The Moscow Times
2/5/19
The last contact Grigoriy Gancherov and his wife had with their son, a Russian private military contractor fighting in Syria, was on Feb. 4 last year. The father subsequently learned from a friend and fellow fighter of Sergei's that the 25-year-old had died several days later in a major battle against U.S.-led forces in the Deir Ezzor region. It was not until mid-April that he received formal notification of his son's death and the body was returned, accompanied by a death certificate stating he died on March 7 on the other side of Syria. Gancherov's account is one of half a dozen instances Reuters has identified where the Kremlin-linked private military organization that recruited the fighters returned bodies more than seven weeks after the battle and with official documents bearing details that people who knew them say were incorrect. According to relatives and a battlefield witness, the fighters all died in the clash in Syria's Deir Ezzor region, which took place overnight on Feb. 7. Such practices, an unusual pattern for Russian fighters killed in Syria, would have helped conceal heavy casualties until after President Vladimir Putin’s re-election in mid-March. Moscow's message at the time was that the military campaign in Syria was a success with only modest human cost. That details are emerging nearly a year after the Deir Ezzor battle indicates that Moscow may struggle to control its message about casualties abroad at a time when it is expanding its military activities in the Middle East and Africa.
About 100 Russian military contractors were killed in the Deir Ezzor battle, sources have said. The Russian foreign ministry has said that only a handful of Russian citizens were killed there and dismissed reports of heavy losses. That was the first direct confrontation between the United States and Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was also the only known battle in Syria in the early part of last year where Russian military contractors took part. Yet in each of the six instances identified by Reuters where fighters were returned to families after the election, the death certificates, issued by Russian officials in Syria, stated they died in late February or March. Several relatives of those fighters said the recruiters who informed them about their family member's death told them not to disclose the circumstances. The belated return of bodies and incorrect documents described by friends and relatives last spring contrasts to the normal sequence observed by Reuters over a period of two years. Typically, recruiters return a body to a family two or three weeks after a death, accompanied by a death certificate bearing a date of death that usually tallies with what relatives know from fellow fighters. The Russian consulate in Syria is responsible for registering the death of Russian civilians killed in the country. Each death certificate carries a serial number, starting from one at the beginning of the year. Russian officials at the consulate issued more than 60 death certificates in the first part of last year through April 8, according to documents seen by Reuters. At least 33 of those were between March 22 and April 8. The election was on March 18. The Russian consulate in Syria didn't respond to requests for comment. Reuters was unable to establish whether all those certificates were for private military contractors.