Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service reported on March 23 that two Tajik men who served in the Russian Army and were killed while fighting in Russian army’s ranks in Ukraine have been buried in Tajikistan.
Sources close to the government told RFE/RL’s Tajik Service that, in all, the bodies of at least four Tajik men who were killed while fighting alongside Russian armed forces in Ukraine had been repatriated to Tajikistan.
RFE/RL's correspondents reportedly found out the identities of two Tajiks who were buried in recent days in Tajikistan's Khatlon and Sughd provinces — 50-year-old Saidakbar Saidov and 38-year-old Ramazon Murtazoyev, who served in the Russian Army and were killed in Ukraine.
Many Tajiks have dual Tajik-Russian citizenship which is allowed by a special agreement between Dushanbe and Moscow.
RFE/RL says Moscow has not provided an update on casualty figures since early in the so-called special military operation, when it said on March 2 that 498 soldiers had been killed.
However, a NATO official told the Associated Press (AP) that the Russian death toll was likely to be between 7,000 and 15,000, although numbers on both sides are impossible to independently confirm.
According to AP. NATO estimated on March 24 that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in four weeks of war in Ukraine.
A senior NATO military official reportedly said the alliance’s estimate was based on information from Ukrainian authorities, what Russia has released — intentionally or not — and intelligence gathered from open sources. The official spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by NATO.
By way of comparison, Russia lost about 15,000 troops over 10 years in Afghanistan, AP added.
Ukraine has released little information about its own military losses, and the West has not given an estimate, but President Volodymr Zelenskyy said nearly three weeks ago that about 1,300 Ukrainian servicemen had been killed.
