What Paul Gregory is Writing About: If Russian Soldiers Aren't Dying In Ukraine, Why Did Putin Make Casualty Stats A State Secret?

I challenge Putin and the Kremlin to remove the criminal penalties for revealing information on military casualties during “peacetime.” Such a law can only be interpreted as hiding a deep and dark secret. Russia has secrecy laws that have no other purpose than to conceal its involvement in Ukraine. The right way for the matter to be resolved is for Russia to repeal the law and allow independent verification.

If Russia truly wants the facts to come out, let there be open discussion, not whispers exchanged in shadows against the overwhelming chatter of the state media. Better still, Russia should disclose the actual number of Russian casualties for whom the government is providing compensation. But I forget. The official number is zero.

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Who Am I?

Paul R. Gregory is a Research Fellow, Hoover Institution
Cullen Professor of Economics, University of Houston. He is also a research professor at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin. He is chair emeritus of the International Advisory Board of the Kyiv School of Economics. He serves as co-editor of the Yale-Hoover Series on Stalin, Stalinism, and Cold War. He has co-edited archival publications, such as the seven volume History of Stalin's Gulag (2004) and the three-volume Stenograms of Meetings of the Politburo (2008). Gregory is the organizer of the Hoover Sino-Soviet Archives Workshop that takes place in the summer at the Hoover Institution.
His recent publications include Lenin's Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives (Hoover 2004) and Terror by Quota (Yale, 2009).

Paul Gregory has a regular blog Forbes.com

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Wednesday, September 2, 2015

If Russian Soldiers Aren't Dying In Ukraine, Why Did Putin Make Casualty Stats A State Secret?

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