Russian politician: Russia does not provide compensation to the families of soldiers killed in Ukraine Wednesday, August 10, 2016 4:25:00 PM

Russian politician and human rights activist, Lev Schlosberg, stated on-air with Ekho Moskvii that the majority of families of Russian servicemen killed in the Donbas don’t get the promised compensation (RUB 2 million) from the state.

“Some people were paid but not all of them. When the number of killed became very high, many of them were labeled as Cossacks and their families didn’t get anything at all. We know people who were killed who were just buried, including in Pskov. As veterans of the war, they were given funeral benefits but not a penny was paid by the State for their deaths because they just found a way to mask these losses,” Schlosberg said.

According to the former MP, the families of Russian servicemen killed in the Donbas remain silent because of fear of the authorities. “I have talked with many families whose relatives took part in hostilities in Ukraine. Some of them survived, some of them were killed. These people have a huge fear of the authorities. The fear of making a public statement was great and many people said: ‘tell us what we should do but don’t tell about us,’” the Russian politician stated.

Schlosberg reported that people began to seek his assistance after the first hostilities when Russian troops suffered losses in the Donbas.

“A huge amount of people came and asked me ‘Do we have to apply to the Military Prosecutor’s Office?’ We had a rough situation when there was no regiment in Pskov, when relatives, spouses, mothers made calls to the division and asked ‘Where? We can’t reach him on the phone. Mobile phones are switched off for the fourth day already.’ Many officers ran away from families of servicemen; they had no order on how to act with families. At the same time, families were standing near the entrance to the division trying to understand where people who were sent to Yeysk for local drills and then to a totally different side [to Ukraine], had gone,” the former MP noted.

Lev Schlosberg was one of the first in Russia to publish evidence of professional Russian servicemen participating in the hostilities in the Donbas.

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