[News] Vitaly Votanovsky flees Russia after documenting a Wagner cemetery

[BirSaNN]

A Russian activist who revealed details of the burials of Wagner mercenaries killed in Ukraine has left Russia.

Vitaly Votanovsky, who began documenting the deaths of Russian soldiers in Ukraine by monitoring graveyards in his home region, fled the country on 4 April after receiving numerous death threats.

He spoke to the BBC from the Armenian capital Yerevan.

Last year, Vitaly spent his 50th birthday in a jail cell.

The activist, from the southern Russian region of Krasnodar, was arrested and jailed on 24 February 2022, the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The former Russian army officer had gone out to protest that day in clothes emblazoned with the words "No to Putin!" and "No to the war!"

Photos of Vitaly in his outfit are included in official court documents which Vitaly showed to the BBC.

"Because of that coat I got 20 days in jail!" he says.

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

He was the first person to discover a now-infamous cemetery in the small village of Bakinskaya in Krasnodar Region, since known as the Wagner cemetery.

This is where the notoriously brutal mercenary group buries many of its dead from Ukraine - men who either have no relatives or whose bodies are unclaimed.

It has grown from a small village graveyard into an enormous cemetery, with several new zones to accommodate the ever-increasing number of dead. Security guards now patrol the facility.

What is Russia's Wagner Group of mercenaries in Ukraine?
On Thursday, Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin visited the cemetery in Bakinskaya village and said he planned to turn it into a memorial "for future generations".

The mercenary group chief admitted that the graveyard has expanded, adding "that's the way life is".

Vitaly started travelling around Krasnodar Region in May 2022, visiting every single graveyard to record the numbers of the fallen.

"I needed to prove to people that there was a catastrophe happening," Vitaly tells me, "that people were dying here, close to them.

"I needed to show people that the war would affect everyone and everything."\

link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65213426