Grave in law: state adopts national standard for mass-casualty burial

The standards for graves, labor costs, the amount of equipment and the way of storing corpses have been established.

Yelena Ivanova, Natalia Seibil

As "NI" found out, on September 13, 2021, the Federal Agency for Technical Regulation and Metrology issues an order, which approves the rules for the urgent burial of corpses in peacetime and wartime. As expected, this strictly technical document outlines all the disposal work point by point. Here is a quote from this noteworthy document:

“The main types of work in this case will be:

- development of a pit for the construction of a mass grave;

- preparation of a pit for the burial of bodies (remains):

“Preparation of bodies (remains) of the victims for burial;

- layout of the first row of bodies (remains) of those killed in mass graves:

- sending of the first row of bodies (remains) of the deceased;

the layout of the second row of bodies (remains) of those killed in mass graves;

- backfilling of the second row of bodies (remains) of the deceased;

- backfilling of mass graves. "

To calculate the possible irrecoverable losses among the population, the document introduces the concept of "the degree of destruction of the city ." The authors of the document proceed from the assumption that the population will die from conventional weapons, therefore, the maximum losses among the unprotected population, in which the degree of defeat is taken as one, will amount to 30%. In shelters, 5% of the city's inhabitants will die, in the simplest shelters - up to 10%.

At enterprises, in the event of their defeat by conventional weapons and the death of 55% of workers, the losses will be considered "complete irrecoverable".

The new national standard deals with the loss of many thousands of civilians - not dozens, not hundreds, but THOUSANDS. In Appendix A to the standard it is written in this way: here is an example of how much manpower and resources will be required to bury “1000 dead within 3 days”.

Officials have established the size of the mass graves. If, dear fellow citizens, we all go for it is not known from what, they will bury us in mass graves 20 meters long, 3 meters wide and 2.3 meters high. They will be dug by bulldozers with an average productivity of 80 cubic meters per hour. The bottom of the grave will be covered with a mineral binder modifier and then compacted with a roller.

Then they will lay us in four layers, either in bags, or in wooden coffins or zinc coffins, prepared in advance in the amount of 300 pieces per 1000 population, and cover us with earth. Then they will again tamp them down, fill them with "mineral binder" and install "devices for the absorption and neutralization of radioactive, hazardous chemicals and biological agents formed during the decomposition of corpses."

Here's a plan.

Defenders of such state actions say that the appearance of this strange and even frightening document is connected, first of all, with the covid.

- The law was being prepared for six months so that you know. We have not yet had forecasts of how the Russian people will die, whether they will be a thousand a day, or 20 thousand a day. All this requires the state to respond appropriately, so that they do not whine, whine and say: here, Mishustin, how many are dying, and people are lying on the roads. The state decided to play ahead of the curve and insure itself in case things go down a critical path , ”says Viktor Baranets, a military expert and Vladimir Putin’s electoral confidant.

If we consider that the document was adopted at the end of September, but after a year of the pandemic, it was clear to its authors that although 1000 people die a day from the coronavirus, mass graves are not needed for their burial. What new epidemic the Russian authorities are preparing for remains a big mystery. It is also unclear with which of the scientists the authors consulted, and who told them that humanity is about to face such a disease that it is necessary to procure bulldozers for digging graves for mass graves. On condition of anonymity, Novye Izvestia spoke with several generals of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Even for them, this document came as a surprise, to put it mildly. One of them could not contain his emotions: "They are there oh ... and!"

Military expert Alexander Golts is sure that when regulatory documents are needed that determine how much labor is needed to collect corpses, their burial and other elaborated details, this means only one thing: such losses can only occur when weapons of mass destruction are used. No natural disaster can cause such a number of losses, neither an earthquake, nor a volcanic eruption:

- Those who prepared these standards thought in terms of either a global epidemic or a global war, in which not only the military, but also the civilian population would die. This is only possible with the use of nuclear weapons. As in an anecdote from the times of the USSR: what to do in case of a nuclear strike? Wrap yourself in a sheet and slowly crawl towards the cemetery to make your work easier ...

Apparently, the authors of the document proceeded from the fact that as a result of a global war, not only the military, but also the civilian population would die. Viktor Baranets agrees with this. They also decided to tackle wartime, the expert says. According to the hawks, Russia has too many military threats in the west, south and north:

- We do not know if Ukraine will attack the Donetsk and Lugansk republics. We do not know if we will interfere. For now, we are saying that we will not interfere. But out of these 100%, in 99 cases we say that we will not attack, but it may turn out that we will have to send troops not only to Donetsk and Lugansk regions, but also to greater Ukraine. We also have a smoke-fused fuse in the Black Sea region. There are also dangers in the region of the Russia-Belarus Union State. It is alarming in the Kaliningrad region. There are grandiose plans for the immediate capture of the Kaliningrad region, even with the use of nuclear weapons. And how, then, will we bury? One by one, or what?

Even Colonel General Ivashov , the former head of the Main Directorate of International Military Cooperation of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, who can hardly be called a political dove, calls for a more cautious attitude towards both military rhetoric and the plans of the military in the Ukrainian direction. This, according to the general, only plays into the hands of the Americans:

- If we are talking about mass graves, the Russian side is actively involved in this, a war with Ukraine is being prepared. Neither the Ukrainian people, nor the Russian people certainly need this war. I do not exclude that it is Russia that initiates this war. We see the escalation. They have been preparing for this war for a long time. All talk shows in recent years have turned our population against the Ukrainians. On the Ukrainian side, the opposite is true. Who is the beneficiary here? Naturally, the beneficiaries will be the Americans.

However, the new standards speak not of a local conflict, but of military operations of a huge scale, comparable to the Second World War, says Alexander Golts . Today in Europe there are simply not enough troops to arrange such a massacre:

- It will take another ten years, according to my estimates, for such a number of troops to be built up in Europe. There are not so many people in Russia to arrange a battle comparable to the battles of World War II. The women let them down, they did not give birth, as Kvashnin said.

Defenders of the new standard remind that we have forgotten about the time when Russia was dying in millions. Then the authorities showed a long reaction, but now they decided to play ahead of the curve. If there is such a development of events when it will be necessary to bury in hundreds and thousands, we will already have the rules of the game. For this, it is necessary to allocate certain personnel, certain equipment, money, up to firewood in the crematorium, until we receive plots where we will bury these people. Everything should be thought out - from A to Z. We are preparing for major crises, says Viktor Baranets.

Doctor of Political Sciences, Professor Yuliy Nisnevich states that there is a pressure, but it is difficult to understand what is being forced, and most importantly, why:

- It is clear that no one needs any real war. More like muscle flexing. I'm not sure about the alarmist ideas that someone is preparing for something. If something serious was being prepared, it would be constructed a little differently.

Most likely, the initiators and authors of the new document are preparing for the war, but not for the future, but for the past. An optimistic answer to the question of why this terrifying document was adopted at all is to close some legislative holes, says Professor Nisnevich :

- It is unlikely that this GOST is related to the current situation. And they were buried in mass graves when they could not identify the dead. It is impossible to imagine such a thing in modern Europe and Russia.

Less peaceful fellow citizens argue that it is necessary to prepare any department, all power structures and the army for any development of events, be it war or plague:

- Yes, yes and yes! In any case, mass graves will have to be done. We must be ready, from the coffin to the ground, before it is cremated. We all have to think it over. How should we localize areas.

Novye Izvestia asked Rosstandart for clarification. At first, the department promised to give a prompt answer. But all the deadlines have passed, according to which the departments are obliged to give an answer to the press request, but there was no answer, and no. Meanwhile, in order to clarify the situation, I still wanted to know who initiated the creation of a new standard on mass graves. From the standard itself, it can be understood that the document was developed by the Federal State Budgetary Institution All-Russian Research Institute for Civil Defense and Emergencies EMERCOM of Russia (Federal Center for Science and High Technologies) [FGBU VNII GOChS (FC)).

As they used to say in the theater: the author, please!