A blurry photo shows a man apparently being forced to kneel in the snow by two other men in plain clothes.Released by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) last week, the image allegedly shows the moment a 48-year-old man was arrested in Yaroslavl, some 250 kilometers northeast of Moscow, for “secretly taking photos and videos” of graves of soldiers killed in Ukraine.The case is the latest in a series in which people have faced treason charges for recording images of Russian military graves.In late June, authorities in the Tomsk region in Siberia, announced that “several” people had been detained for gathering information about Russian soldiers, including war dead, in exchange for cash payments.Two similar cases have also been recorded in the Sverdlovsk region, where two suspects have been accused of sending their “handlers” for the equivalent of around $1 dollar per shot.
A man is detained after allegedly taking photos of war graves in Russia's Yaroslavl region.
In Yekaterinburg, the regional capital, authorities said security patrols were being beefed up at cemeteries “so that people who are being targeted by recruiters [seeking photos of graves] understand that this is not a harmless matter -- it is a crime that can result in real punishment.”In most cases, the FSB alleges that the suspects were working for Ukrainian handlers.Graves As Evidence Of CasualtiesPhotographs of graves have been a source of information for journalists and human rights groups seeking to assess the numbers of Russians killed fighting in Ukraine -- figures that the Russian authorities are keen to keep quiet.There are various estimates of the extent of fatalities.In May, a British intelligence chief said nearly 500,000 Russian soldiers had been killed since the Kremlin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. A report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) last month put the figure at 450,000.“The Kremlin has made every effort to hide the actual number of fatalities,” CSIS analyst Seth Jones told RFE/RL earlier this year. “The Russian military has performed worse than any major military we looked at in the last century.”
