Kremlin TV has run its first broadcast regarding the deaths of Russian soldiers in Ukraine (see the broadcast from Channel 1 on 4 September embedded at the top of the stream).

As Halya Coynash has reported from the Committee for Human Rights in Ukraine (KHPG), Russia’s Channel 1 (Pervy Kanal) aired a carefully-edited program about Anatoly Travkin, a soldier of the 98th Paratroopers Airborne Division based in Kostryoma (translation by The Interpreter):

Today in Kostryoma, people bid farewell to paratrooper Anatoly Travkin. About a month ago, he headed off to Donbass and died in battle. He did not inform either his wife, whom he married not long before his departure, or the command of the unit where he officially served. He simply took a vacation. His funeral took place with military honors, next to the grave of his mother. His relatives, including his grandmother came to pay their last respects as well as his fellow servicemen from the organization. Anatoly Travkin was 28 years old.

Mikhail Kozlov, an Airborne Troops Devision veteran himself, then appears on camera and in a very halting speech that seems rehearsed, he expresses sorrow at the loss of such young persons:

“But I’m glad that in our small Russian provincial towns, there are growing up such young guys who are not indifferent to what is happening today in our world.”

The program also mentions the death of Sergei Zhdanovich, one of the

first cases of a soldier killed in action in Ukraine which we covered,

at the Donetsk Airport battle on 26 May

In covering the commemoration organized by a national veterans’ group Boyevoye Bratsvo [Combat Brotherhood] for Zhdanovich, who was an Afghan war veteran, TV1 made the false claim, “His relatives knew where he was going.”

But in fact, according to his wife’s account to Novaya Gazeta back in June, she did not know his whereabouts.

She eventually stumbled on the truth about his mission by finding a war game buddy with whom her husband had spoken in code within the game about his real trip to the Donbass.

But by the time the 4 September NTV show was made, Lyana was portrayed as implying to the state journalists that she did know where her husband was going. She, too, speaks haltingly, with long pauses:

He went to war…consciously. It was pointless to hold him back, because the man took the decision immediately. He did what a real man should do…. We really miss him. But for the rest of our lives we will be proud of him.

At the time, some media reports claimed Zhdanovich was an FSB agent, but there was no evidence of this claim, or evidence that such information had been removed from his social media page, as the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported at the time. The original claim of an FSB connection was made by an Ekho Moskvy reporter who linked to a page that in fact didn’t support that claim, and she did not later claim that the page was tampered with; subsequently other independent journalists reported directly on the scene and interviewed relatives and did not substantiate the claim. Participation in a spetsnaz battalion does not equate FSB affiliation.

While back in June, journalists were invited by Aleksandr Boroday of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” to see the return of the bodies to Russia, they were never shown the full list of names, and only caught a glimpse of one and were able to reconstruct a few others. They could not be certain that the claim of 31 killed was the total number.

As Coynash commented, the purpose of the broadcast appeared to be “damage control.”

Indeed, successful propaganda and disinformation campaigns always contain some measure of truth, because it is easier to get people to believe a story when the truth is admixed with lies, instead of trying to maintain a complete cover-up.

Public pressure over the unexplained deaths of soldiers has been mounting in Russia as more and more bodies are returned to families in provincial towns. Last week, the Soldiers’ Mothers of St. Petersburg and members of the Presidential Human Rights Council obtained a meeting with the Russian Defense Ministry to raise their concerns about missing soldiers.

But they were greeted with the news that the Defense Ministry was dealing with the problem of soldiers failing to contact their relatives by sending out SMS messages to all the soldiers with a public service announcement, “Call Your Mom” — as if forgetfulness was the problem. The military officials took the mothers’ lists but have not provided any answers yet on the cases.

The Channel 1 broadcast on Travkin is part of an overall propaganda surge, as Coynash points out, with “plausible explanations” provided for battles in Ukraine — for example there is an NTV show with the claim that “English and Polish were spoken” at the Donetsk Airport battle, with even an American tank supposedly on the runway.

We could also point out a claim of “five NATO officers” conveniently “seen in Mariupol” before the NATO summit — although there were no such personnel. Stories about “American mercenaries” numbering 150 or 300 or 450 have also repeatedly appeared in the state-run Russian media.