Russia and Ukraine: the escape of Vitaly Votanovsky, who uncovered a cemetery for the dead Wagner, after death threats
image copyright VITALY VOTANOVSKY
Vitaly Votanovsky was arrested at the beginning of the war for wearing a T-shirt that read “No to war”.
A Russian activist left his country after revealing the details of the burial of Wagner mercenaries who were killed in Ukraine.
Vitaly Votanovsky, who began documenting the killing of Russian soldiers in Ukraine by monitoring cemeteries in his area, fled Russia on April 4 after receiving numerous death threats.
Vitaly spoke to the BBC from Yerevan, the Armenian capital.
Last year, Vitaly spent his fiftieth birthday in a prison cell.
The activist from the Krasnodar region in southern Russia was arrested and imprisoned on February 24, 2022, the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The former Russian army officer had gone out to protest that day wearing clothes that read “No to Putin!” and “No to war!”
Pictures of Vitaly expressing his opposition were included in his trial documents, which were seen by the BBC, and he said: “Because of these clothes, I spent 20 days in prison!”
image copyright VITALY VOTANOVSKY
Votanovsky has done his best to count the graves of Russian fighters since his release
In Krasnodar, Vitaly is known not for street protests, but for documenting graves.
He was the first to discover the grave scandal in the small village of Bakinskaya in the Krasnodar region, which has since been known as the Wagner Cemetery.
This is where Wagner’s mercenary group buried many of its dead, killed in Ukraine, who were either unrelated or unidentified.
The small village cemetery has expanded into a huge cemetery. to accommodate the ever-increasing death toll. Security guards are now patrolling the area.
On Thursday, Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin visited the cemetery in the village of Bakinskaya, and stated that he intended to turn it into a memorial “for future generations.”
Wagner’s boss acknowledged that the cemetery had expanded, adding, “This is life.”
In May 2022, Vitaly began walking around the Krasnodar region visiting every cemetery to record the death toll.
“I needed to prove to people that a catastrophe was happening,” Vitale added, and that people were dying here, close to them.
He also said, “I needed to show people that war would cast a shadow over everyone and everything.”
image copyright YEVGENY PRIGOZHIN
Chief Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin (second from right) visiting the cemetery
Vitaly Votanovsky meticulously recorded the names and details of all the graves he found.
When Vitaly fled Russia earlier this month, his database contained more than 1,300 names of the dead from the Krasnodar region alone.
Vitaly was able to identify the graves of men who died in the war, as opposed to ordinary, civilian deaths, by asking the locals, and by the wreaths and pictures on the graves.
In December 2022, Vitaly went to Bakinskaya to photograph the graves of regular soldiers.
But while he was there, he and a colleague were told by cemetery workers that they were burying Wagner’s mercenaries killed in action.
“When we were there, there were already 48 Wagner graves,” Vitale said. Then the next time we went a few days later, there were 95 graves, then 164 graves and then about 270 graves.”
Vitali kept coming back to document the numbers and names of those killed. The BBC asked Vitali if he knew who these men were. “It was clear that they were convicts and mercenaries,” he said.
He added, “They were recruited from prisons. Journalists checked the names and found out why they went to prison.”
image copyright VITALY VOTANOVSKY
The cemetery extended beyond the hamlet as the death toll mounted
But the cemetery in the village of Bakinskaya was not the only place where Vitaly documented the bodies of Wagner fighters.
He continued to monitor the military dead in all cemeteries in the Krasnodar region, and he was appalled by his findings.
Vitaly cited the information he gathered in Krasnodar, saying: “The fact is that since December 2022, Russia’s losses on the battlefield have multiplied many times over.”
He added, “The death toll has skyrocketed. Lately, all the graves were crowded with soldiers and Wagner’s men, and there were very few professional soldiers.”
Several Western intelligence agencies have claimed that the Russian military is running out of men.
Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared “partial mobilization” in the country, drafting hundreds of thousands of men into the armed forces and sending them to the front lines in Ukraine.
The last official death toll announced by the Russian military was in September 2022, when Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that 5,937 servicemen had been killed in Ukraine.
Estimates of total casualties vary, but most American and European officials put the Russian death toll at more than 60,000.
image copyright VITALY VOTANOVSKY
Vitaly Votanovsky continued the process of counting the war dead as new graves emerged
Vitaly started receiving threats several months ago.
Vitaly said: “As soon as I published my first message about the graves, threats began to rain down on me.
“In January, someone called and offered me a place in the cemetery,” Vitali explained.
“There have been three such calls, I received two, and Victor’s drivers received the third,” he added.
Copies of the death threats and a recording of the phone call were seen by the BBC.
In this recording, the threat comes in the form of a dry call from a company that sells cemetery land and coffins, chillingly insisting: “It’s time to think about the end of your life.”
Vitali said the past week saw the straw that broke the camel’s back.
He added, “I was walking in front of a police station in Krasnodar and an officer recognized me. He told me: get ready! It’s your turn! He meant the state’s reaction to my interviews. They already had enough to open a serious criminal case against me.”
Vitaly fled to Armenia and is now planning to seek political asylum in Germany.
The BBC asked Vitali: Why don’t the authorities want people like him to publish information about Wagner and about Russian casualties in the war?
Vitaly replied: “For our country, these are terrifying statistics, and the Russian people do not know the real numbers. I wanted people to know the true scale of the disaster.”
He added, “If people find out the real numbers of casualties on the battlefield, they will go crazy.”