Russian minister says 48,000 relatives trying to trace soldiers via DNA

By Mark Trevelyan

LONDON (Reuters) - Forty-eight thousand relatives of Russian troops have submitted DNA samples, a government minister was recorded as saying, in a sensitive discussion apparently referring to attempts to identify dead soldiers by their remains.

The figure was given by Deputy Defence Minister Anna Tsivilyova at a round-table discussion on Nov. 26, prompting a senior lawmaker to warn that such data should not be published anywhere.

Russia has not released official statistics about its war losses in Ukraine since the initial months following its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Western countries believe hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded in gruelling trench warfare in Europe's deadliest conflict since World War Two.

Independent news site Astra published a video of last week's meeting where Russian officials and lawmakers were discussing support for troops involved in what Moscow calls its "special military operation" and for their family members.

Tsivilyova said the 48,000 soldiers' relatives had submitted their DNA for free to an interior ministry database.

Andrei Kartapolov, head of parliament's defence committee, responded: "Anna Evgenyevna (Tsivilyova) just gave some figures, including for those missing in action. I strongly ask you not to mention these numbers anywhere. This is classified information, quite sensitive. And when we draw up the final documents, we don't want these numbers to be floating around anywhere."

Tsivilyova replied: "I didn't give the numbers of missing people, but the number of requests to us. Many of them will be found. So this number is specifically requests, not data."

Astra published video of the meeting, which was streamed at the time on the website of parliament's lower house, the Duma. On Wednesday it was no longer available on the site.

Reuters requested comment from the Russian defence ministry, which did not immediately respond.

Independent Russian news site Mediazona and the BBC Russian service have confirmed the names of 79,819 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, as of Nov. 19, in the course of the 33-month war. The Wall Street Journal, citing unidentified Western intelligence officials, said last month that up to 200,000 Russian soldiers had died so far.

The Economist estimated last month that at least 60,000-100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and up to 400,000 were too injured to fight on. Western countries believe Russia has suffered higher casualties than Ukraine but still has a manpower advantage because of its far larger population.

(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Peter Graff)