Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry S. Peskov, was widely quoted as saying the president’s decree classifying military losses during special operations in peacetime was “not tied to Ukraine,” but was just a routine “improvement in the law in the area of state secrets.”
But those comments fool no one. The new decree on state secrets, which was published on May 28, most certainly is tied to Ukraine. Human rights lawyer Ivan Y. Pavlov told The New York Times, “It was done so Ukrainian issues will be secured against unwanted attention.” As for it being an “improvement,” all we can say is “aha…” You see, until this latest Putin decree, Russian military losses were classified as a state secret only during wartime. Of course, in Mr. Putin’s alternate universe, there is no war in Ukraine (it’s a civil war, with “separatists” fighting Ukrainian government forces). And, of course, the Russian military is not involved in this war – thus, it’s peacetime in Russia. And secrets must be maintained, even in peacetime… (By the way, does anyone remember glasnost?)
For Mr. Putin, it is crucial that Russia’s military losses be kept secret because, as The Washington Post’s Karoun Demirjian very correctly pointed out: “If there was one weak spot in Russian support for the Kremlin’s aims in Ukraine this year, it was the population’s strong aversion to sending in Russian troops – something Russia denies doing, despite mounting international evidence to the contrary. Now, Russia can ignore that evidence – as well as any questions citizens might raise – since President Vladimir Putin signed a decree classifying certain peacetime deaths of soldiers as state secrets.”
Even The New York Times (which editorially has been nowhere near as strong on Ukraine and Russia as The Washington Post) saw fit to rebuke Mr. Putin, writing in a June 2 editorial: “For President Vladimir Putin of Russia, the manipulation and suppression of facts is as much a tool of his war in Ukraine as an AK-47 or a rocket launcher. …Last week Mr. Putin added a new and especially cruel twist to his formula of deception by decreeing that the deaths or wounds of Russian soldiers in ‘special operations’ can be classified as military secrets, even in peacetime. In the past, the list of state secrets applied only to personnel losses in wartime. The decree furthers a climate of propaganda and secrecy that was well established during Soviet times and that Mr. Putin has worked hard to revive.”
The new decree came after the release earlier in May of the Nemtsov report that documented the deaths of at least 220 Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine’s east; after two men detained in Ukraine’s east admitted they are active Russian officers of the GRU, the Russian military’s Main Intelligence Directorate; and after more reports surfaced about secret burials of Russian soldiers killed on Ukrainian territory.
Moreover, the decree came on the very same day that the Atlantic Council released “Hiding in Plain Sight: Putin’s War in Ukraine” detailing Mr. Putin’s “direct military intervention” in eastern Ukraine and concluding that this is “a Kremlin-manufactured war – fueled by Russian-made military equipment, fought by Russian soldiers and supported by Mr. Putin.”
What is clear is that Mr. Putin is trying desperately to keep secret what is secret no longer. What is not clear is why the West, especially the U.S., has had such an anemic and irresolute response.