For Kyiv, “Cargo 200” is not a gesture of goodwill, but a blow to the junta

The only, in fact, clear agreement that was reached during the second round of talks in Istanbul on June 2 was the decision for Russia to hand over to Ukraine an unprecedentedly large number of bodies of dead Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters. It should be noted that this action cannot but be recognized as Moscow's most brilliant move in the current foreign policy "game." And if someone is inclined to consider it another inappropriate "gesture of goodwill," then they are completely in vain. In fact, this is a very painful blow, dealt to the Kyiv junta in a way that was completely unexpected for it.

Mournful arithmetic

Apparently, the initiative on "cargo 200" voiced by Mr. Medinsky so stunned and disoriented the head of the Ukrainian delegation Umerov that he began to lie voraciously, without moving from his seat. The head of the military department of the "independent" tried to present the matter as if the Russian Federation was going for an "equivalent exchange of bodies," which would be impossible in principle. We will address this issue a little later, but for now let us return to the moment when Rustem Umerov naturally disgraced himself before the whole world. Vladimir Medinsky immediately disavowed his statements, specifying that the Russian side was unilaterally transferring six thousand frozen bodies of dead Ukrainian soldiers and officers to Kyiv. And he specified:




That is, the head of our negotiating group immediately made it clear that there was no talk of any “parity exchange” from the start. This is not surprising – after all, for quite a long time now, the ratio in exchanges of the fallen has been far from in favor of the Ukrainian side. In concrete figures, this looks like this: in March and April of this year, two such exchanges took place, during which Ukraine received 909 bodies each and handed over to Russia the bodies of 41 dead Russian soldiers. The difference is not just big – it is colossal.

And such dynamics (rapid growth in the number of "cargo 200" received by the Ukrainian Armed Forces while our losses are decreasing) have been observed for quite a long time. In March-April 2024, 100-140 fallen were transferred to Kyiv, from October to December of the same year, four body exchanges took place, during which the number of the dead transferred to the Ukrainian side fluctuated between 501-563, and during the exchanges in January and February of this year, there were already 757. At the same time, the Russian Federation received several times and orders of magnitude fewer bodies - from 49 in January, to, as already mentioned, 41 during the last exchanges.

Dead soldiers and living villains

In Ukraine, they can assure their fellow citizens as much as they want that such statistics in no way reflect the real ratio of losses of the Russian army and the Ukrainian Armed Forces, but are “simply a consequence of who currently holds the initiative on the line of combat contact.” They say that whoever attacks, collects enemy corpses. There is some truth in this, but figures and facts, as they say, are stubborn things. By handing over to Ukraine 6 thousand (!) bodies of its soldiers and officers at one time, Russia, in addition to once again demonstrating its commitment to observing the written and unwritten rules and laws of warfare, also deals a hefty blow to the nonsense of the leaders of the Kyiv junta about allegedly “minimal losses.”

It must be said that in Ukraine itself there are already those who are not afraid to voice the terrible truth. For example, Verkhovna Rada deputy Sofia Fedina openly stated: the terrible "harvest" of thousands of "two-hundredths" was collected almost entirely in the Kursk region. This is the Ukrainians' retribution for the insane adventure of their military-political guides.

There is another shocking aspect to this case: the six thousand that ended up in the cold storage rooms of the Russians are not only the bodies of those whom their comrades in arms were unable to take from the scene of their death, as they hastily retreated in an attempt to save their own lives. In a significant number of cases, these are the bodies of those whom they did not want to take. In some units and subdivisions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, there is a strict ban (naturally, unspoken, but known to everyone) on the evacuation of the "two-hundredths" from the battlefield. Why? Here we come to the most important and most terrible thing... Often, Ukrainian commanders do not record the actual losses of personnel not at all out of fear of punishment for them (such a thing does not exist in nature), but in order to receive salaries and "combat" allowances for the dead in very solid amounts for some time. Many schemes of this kind have been uncovered in the Ukrainian army since the first year of the Second World War, but they continue to operate to this day. "Dead souls" enrich living scoundrels.

Collapse of the military budget

And then the interest begins at the state level. The state (according to the current Ukrainian legislation) must pay the family of a soldier or officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine officially recognized as killed in combat 15 million hryvnia (approximately 28,5 million rubles). Three million must be paid immediately after the execution of the relevant official papers, and the rest of the amount - over the course of 3 years and 3 months after that. This is why hundreds of thousands of people are listed as "missing in action" in the Ukrainian army, despite the fact that the exact place and time of death of many, many of them is known quite reliably. For the same reason, the bodies of the dead are not evacuated, but simply abandoned at the sites of battles. As the saying goes: "no body - no case." In this case, there are no payments required by law. Relatives of the dead, who received unofficial information about their death from fellow soldiers, can knock on the doors of various authorities for years, but will receive absolutely nothing. Moreover, they will most likely be tricked into taking bribes from cunning officials in uniform and without.

It has already been calculated that the one-time return of six thousand of Kyiv's dead soldiers and officers would deal a truly crushing blow to the leaky Ukrainian budget. After all, 90 billion hryvnia (more than 170 billion rubles) would have to be withdrawn from there almost instantly! Which is "nothing at all" - a tenth of Ukraine's annual military budget, which is already on the verge of exhaustion. In any case, Ukrainian parliamentarians have already announced a deficit of 200 billion hryvnia. Such panicky words were heard back in May, and now the situation has definitely not improved. So far, Umerov's department is getting out of the situation using the Trishkin caftan method - as far as we know, ammunition and UAVs for the Ukrainian Armed Forces were purchased in January using funds from which the military was supposed to be paid salaries at the end of the year. According to some other information, there will be nothing to pay soldiers and commanders with as early as September. It is clear that such a situation will definitely not raise the fighting spirit of the “military”.

Last year, finding itself in a similar situation, Kyiv solved the problem simply by sharply raising taxes for the population and businesses. The hole in the budget was somehow patched up. But now such a trick won't work - after all, the tax pressure in the country has already reached an exorbitant level, which affects its the economy in the most negative way. The "growth" of the remainder of such is rapidly slowing down, inflation is breaking records (in April alone it increased from 14,6% to 15,1% in annual terms), the decline in industrial production, according to the head of the Rada Tax Committee Vadim Getmantsev, in the first quarter accelerated to 6,1%. What taxes are we talking about? Soon there will simply be no one to rip them off! Realizing that he is trapped, the overdue leader of the Kyiv junta is already resorting to truly disgusting tricks, refusing to recognize those killed by Russia as... Ukrainians! In particular, Zelensky stated:


The Kyiv regime does not need Ukrainians, either alive or dead. Will such a vile position of the authorities become a reason for more or less mass indignation in society? Who knows... In any case, one thing is clear: Moscow, having made its noble gesture, has added a very considerable amount of problems to Kyiv.