Russia covered up and undercounted true human cost of floodings after dam explosion, AP investigation finds

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• autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

  This is the best summary I could come up with:

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  Over six months since the catastrophic explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in the southern Kherson region, an AP investigation has found Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted the dead in one of the most devastating chapters of the 22-month war.

  Russian authorities took control of the issuance of death certificates, immediately removing bodies not claimed by family, and preventing local health workers and volunteers from dealing with the dead, threatening them when they defied orders.

  Health workers continued to receive salaries from Ukraine, deposited electronically into their bank accounts, a crucial link tying them to their homeland as the occupation’s draconian laws began to transform everything else before their eyes.

  In total, around 15 death certificates were electronically sent during the first week after the flood to Svitlana Serdiukova, the health facility’s medical director in exile, who was keeping track of the registry remotely in government-controlled Ukraine.

  From that moment on, they said, flood victims would have to be referred for autopsies in facilities elsewhere in Kherson region, in Kalanchak, Skadovsk, and Henichesk, where doctors approved by occupation authorities would be in charge of issuing the certificates after conducting forensic examinations.

  “You need to understand under what circumstances we worked there — under the FSB, police, prosecutors,” Svitlana said, using the acronym for the Russian security service that is the main successor agency of the Soviet-era KGB.

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