The Russian activist who disclosed the details of the funeral of the Wagner mercenaries killed in Ukraine has left Russia. Vitaly Votanovsky, who began documenting the deaths of Russian soldiers in Ukraine by observing cemeteries in his home region, fled the country on April 4 after receiving death threats, according to the BBC, which reports that he was in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, according to News. .ro.

Last year, Vitaly spent his 50th birthday in a pre-trial detention center.

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.

A former officer of the Russian army that day went to a protest wearing clothes with the inscription “No to Putin!” and “No war!”

Photos of Vitaly in his outfit are in official court documents.

“I got 20 days in jail for these clothes!” he says.

In Krasnodar, Vitaly is known not for street protests, but for documenting graves.

He was the first person to discover a cemetery in the small village of Bakunska in the Krasnodar Territory, known since then as the Wagner Cemetery.

It is here that the notoriously brutal group of mercenaries bury many of their Ukrainian dead – men who either have no relatives or whose bodies have not been claimed.

It grew from a small village cemetery to a huge cemetery with several new plots to accommodate the growing number of dead. Security forces are now patrolling the area.

On Thursday, Wagner’s head Yevgeny Prigozhin visited the cemetery in the village of Bakunska and said that he plans to turn it into a memorial “for future generations.”

The leader of the mercenary group admitted that the cemetery had expanded, adding that “such is life.”

Vitaly began traveling through the Krasnodar region in May 2022, visiting every cemetery to record the number of dead.

“I had to prove to people that there was a disaster,” says Vitaly, “that people are dying here, next to them.” I had to show people that the war will affect everyone and everything.”

He meticulously recorded the names and details of all the graves he found.

When he left Russia earlier this month, his database contained more than 1,300 names, including only those killed in the Krasnodar region.

Vitaly identified the graves of men who died in the war – as opposed to ordinary civilian deaths – by interviewing local residents and studying wreaths and photographs on the graves.

In December 2022, the activist went to Bakunsk to photograph the graves of ordinary soldiers.

But while they were there, the cemetery workers told Vitaly and his colleagues that they were burying Wagner’s mercenaries who had died in battle.

“When we were there, there were already 48 graves of Wagner. Then the next time I came, a few days later, there were 95 graves. Then 164. Then about 270,” he says.

Vitaly constantly returned to document the number and names of the dead. When asked if he knew who the men were, he said. “It was clear that these were convicts and mercenaries.”

“They were recruited from prisons. Journalists looked at the names and found out why they went to prison.”

But Vitaly documented not only the fallen Wagner soldiers from the Baku cemetery.

He continued to monitor all dead soldiers in all cemeteries of the Krasnodar Territory. And what he discovered shocked him.

“The truth is that since December 2022, Russia’s losses on the battlefield have increased several times,” says Vitaly, referring to the statistics he collected in Krasnodar.

“Mortality simply increased rapidly. And recently, all Wagner’s mobilized and mercenary soldiers were in their graves at the cemeteries. It was very little [soldaţi profesionişti]”.

Several Western intelligence agencies have said that the Russian army is ending.

Last year, President Putin announced a “partial mobilization” in Russia – hundreds of thousands of men were drafted into the armed forces and sent to the front lines in Ukraine.

The last time the Russian military provided official data on the dead was in September 2022, when Defense Minister Serhii Shoigu said that 5,937 soldiers had died in Ukraine.

Estimates of total casualties vary, but most American and European officials say the number of Russian dead exceeds 60,000.

Threats to Vitaly began to arrive many months ago.

“As soon as I wrote my first post about the graves, the threats started. “We will kill you, we will destroy you.” In January, someone called and offered “a place in the cemetery. There were three such calls – I received two, one – my driver Viktor,” Vitaly said.

The BBC obtained copies of the death threats and a recording of the telephone conversation.

In it, a recognizable man disguises his threat as a cold call from a company that sells cemetery plots and coffins. He ominously insists that: “Now is the time when you must think about the end of your life.” (News.ro)

The last straw, says the activist, was last week.

“I was passing a police station in Krasnodar, and a policeman recognized me]He said: “Get ready. It’s coming.” He was referring to the state’s reaction[totheinterviewthathegavetohishusbandwhichwasenoughtoopenaminorcriminalcaseagainsthim”hesaid[lainterviuripecareledădeamAuavutdejastulepentruadeschideundosarpenalseriosîmpotrivamea”aspusel[наінтерв’юякіядававЇмужевистачилощобпорушитипротименесерйознукримінальнусправу»–сказаввін[lainterviuripecareledădeamAuavutdejadestulepentruadeschideundosarpenalseriosîmpotrivamea”aspusel

Vitaly fled to Armenia and now plans to apply for political asylum in Germany.

When asked why the authorities do not want people like him to publish information about the “Wagner” PMC and the losses of Russians in the war, Vitaly answered: “These are terrible statistics for our country, and Russian people simply do not know the real numbers. I wanted to show people the true scale of the disaster. If people knew the true number of casualties on the battlefield, they would go mad.”