A pro-war Russian military blogger died Wednesday, his lawyer said, after the blogger wrote that the country’s military pressured him to remove a post exposing the scale of its losses in a recent battle in Ukraine.
Blogger Andrei Morozov claimed in his post that Russia had lost 16,000 men and 300 armored vehicles in its assault on the Ukrainian town of Avdiivka, which the Russians captured last week. He deleted the post on Tuesday after what he said was a campaign of intimidation against him.
The next morning, Morozov posted a series of messages on Telegram. describing the complaints he had received from the Russian military command and Kremlin propagandists about his disclosure. In his messages she threatened to end his life.
His lawyer, Maksim Pashkov, confirmed the death in a written response to questions. He did not specify a cause.
Morozov’s death was reported Wednesday by Russian state media, a pro-Russian official in occupied Ukraine and several prominent Russian military bloggers, an informal community of veterans, pro-government war correspondents and military experts who have become an important source. of information about the war in Russia.
Initially, these critical ultranationalist bloggers were tolerated in the war: they supported the Russian army and drew attention to the problems of its troops. But they have been repressed after last year’s mutiny by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who created the paramilitary force known as Wagner and espoused similar views.
Prigozhin died last August in a plane crash that Western officials blamed on the Kremlin. Another prominent ultranationalist blogger, Igor Girkin, was jailed on charges of extremism, forcing other, lesser-known critics to largely toe the official line.
The intimidation described by Morozov, 44, also comes as the Russian government attempts to crack down on remaining expressions of dissent following the death of opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny last week.
The government has detained hundreds of people for attempting to lay flowers at makeshift memorials or express public tribute to Navalny in other ways. On Tuesday, the government said it had detained a dual U.S.-Russian citizen on charges of treason. A group of lawyers said the indictment arose from a $50 donation to the Ukrainian war effort.
Also on Tuesday, Ukrainian officials confirmed the death of a Russian military deserter, who was found dead with gunshot wounds in Spain. The Russian government has not claimed responsibility, but the head of Russia’s foreign spy agency called the victim on Tuesday. Maksim Kuzminov, a “moral corpse.”
Associates of Mr. Morozov, the blogger, have not alleged foul play in their public tributes, claiming that he shot himself. But in posts published shortly before his death, Morozov described threats and intimidation against him.
“Many people in my life have tried to threaten, pressure and convince me,” Morozov wrote in a post on Wednesday. “His final argument: ‘You won’t change anything!’”
Morozov said he decided to delete the post about Avdiivka after receiving a request from an anonymous colonel, who told him that otherwise his unit would not receive new equipment.
“I am being executed, if no one has the courage to commit this insignificant act,” Morozov added, in apparent reference to his critics.
Russian federal officials had not commented on his death as of Wednesday afternoon.
Morozov, a strong supporter of the invasion, said he made the Avdiivka losses public to draw attention to the plight of Russian troops.
His publications describe a Russian campaign to take the city at any cost. He said one regiment, a Russian army unit that normally has around 2,000 soldiers, was “wiped to zero.” He also said wounded soldiers who tried to convey the magnitude of the losses to civilian officials have been ignored.
Ukrainian commanders were able to get the bulk of their forces out of Avdiivka before the Russians could surround them, Morozov wrote. Senior US officials told the New York Times that hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers were still captured in the retreat.
A longtime nationalist commentator, Morozov began blogging on LiveJournal, which was popular in Russia in the 2000s. In those more permissive days, the site served as a platform for dissidents across the political spectrum, including Navalny.
After the Russian occupation of parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014, Morozov was part of a generation of ultranationalist intellectuals who traveled there to put into practice their ideas about the national unity of all Russian-speaking peoples. Many of them became prominent supporters of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022 and targets of Ukrainian assassination plots.
Morozov served in a pro-Russian militia in the occupied Luhansk region and later began posting on Telegram under the nickname “We Heard from Yanina,” a reference to distant news from a book by Alexander Dumas that was popularized in the Soviet Union. The blog combined ultranationalist rhetoric with criticism of perceived corruption and distancing from the Russian leadership, whom Morozov blamed for the country’s military setbacks.
Morozov was a rare critical voice left in the once bustling and competitive community of Russian military bloggers. Despite his support for the Russian war effort, he appears to have been under no illusions that justice would be served in his death.
“The official investigation will clarify everything, ha ha,” he wrote in one of his last posts.
Oleg Matsnev contributed to the research.