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Russia Reports Troop Deaths In Ukraine, But Calls Them 'Volunteers'
Ukraine and the West, including the United States, insist that the Russian army has been fighting in eastern Ukraine, a charge that Russia just as vehemently denies.
But reports from Russia now acknowledge that Russian soldiers are part of the battle — though they are claimed to be volunteers, on leave from their army jobs.
Critics say the Russian military is ordering soldiers into the fight, and covering up the deaths of those who are killed, in an unacknowledged war on foreign soil.
The Russian TV channel NTV carried a report on the funerals of two Russian paratroopers who were killed while fighting in Ukraine. The men were buried with full military honors, including the Russian national anthem and a gun salute fired by fellow paratroopers.
The NTV report quoted the leader of a prominent veterans' group as saying the men were heroes who died for the freedom of Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine. The report also said the two men took leave from their military duties in Russia, without telling their superiors that they planned to fight alongside the separatists in Ukraine's eastern provinces.
Mothers and wives of Russian paratroopers captured in Ukraine wait for information outside their base in Kostroma, Russia. Russia's military has been challenged to explain an upsurge in dead and missing soldiers from its elite units.
That's in keeping with a recent statement from the current leader of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic.
"We have never hidden that there are many Russians among us," Alexander Zakharchenko told reporters at a recent news conference. "There's no secret that among the volunteers from Russia, there are many military men."
Zakharchenko said there have been 3,000-4,000 Russians fighting with the separatists, and he acknowledged that some of them have been killed.
Russian leaders, from President Putin on down, consistently deny that Russia has any role at all in the fighting, but Russia's military has been challenged to explain an upsurge in dead and missing soldiers from its elite units.
Another two members of a parachute division were buried in the western Russian city of Pskov last month. The official explanation was that they had been killed in a training exercise in southern Russia, but references on social media suggested that they had actually been in eastern Ukraine.
"just taking a stroll"
