Key Points and Summary – While the Kremlin remains silent on its “one million casualties” in Ukraine, a grim economic indicator is telling the story: Russia’s funeral industry is booming.
-According to Russian media outlet Kommersant, the country’s funeral services market surged by 12.7% in the first four months of 2025, with nearly 200 new businesses opening to meet the morbid demand.
-This comes as reports indicate that promised state support for burials is often insufficient, forcing families of fallen soldiers to shoulder the rising costs of coffins and grave-digging themselves.
-The booming funeral economy serves as a damning, real-world measure of the war’s true human cost.
As Casualties Mount, Russia’s Funeral Industry Sees Record Growth
As Russia’s war on Ukraine enters its fourth summer, one of the most telling signs of the conflict’s actual toll isn’t coming from the battlefield or the Kremlin’s censored figures, but from the graveyards.
New figures published by the Russian outlet Kommersant reveal that the country’s funeral services market surged by 12.7 percent in the first four months of 2025, compared to the same period last year.
Nearly 200 new businesses have emerged to meet the morbid demand, with the highest growth recorded in Tatarstan, St. Petersburg, and the Moscow region.
Moscow Dodges Promised Support for Fallen Soldiers’ Families
In a country where war casualties are buried by bureaucratic silence, the expansion of the funeral sector has become an unexpected but unmistakable measure of the conflict’s human cost.
Though Moscow has long promised financial support to the families of fallen soldiers, reality tells a different story.
“I paid for everything myself,” one woman wrote on social media after her father died near Pokrovsk, eastern Ukraine. “No burial service, no death benefits. No one came, not even a military representative.”
Families Forced to Pay Funeral Bills in Ukraine War
Her account echoes across Russia.
While a government decree theoretically covers burial expenses up to around $650 in most areas (and $880 in Moscow and St. Petersburg), the average cost of a funeral now stands at $750. Families are left to bridge the gap, often without the recognition or assistance the state once promised.
Coffin prices alone rose 9 percent in April, and grave-digging costs jumped 15 percent. But this is about more than inflation. It’s about the invisible cost of a war that the Kremlin continues to obscure.
With nearly a million Russians estimated to have been killed or wounded, the death toll is finding expression not in official statistics, but in skyrocketing business for undertakers.
Kremlin is Hiding the Truth in Ukraine
The Telegram channel Funeral Trust, which monitors the sector, notes that demand continues to rise with no sign of abating.
For those tracking the war’s impact from within Russia’s increasingly restricted information space, this data tells a story the government will not: the war is far from over—and the losses are mounting.
There is bitter irony here. A state that sends young men to die under the banner of national greatness has managed to privatize their untimely passing.
In the absence of state accountability, grief becomes a quiet, lonely transaction. The booming funeral economy might be good for business, but it’s an indictment of the cost of the war.
When silence is official policy, even death finds its voice in profit margins.
About the Author:
Georgia Gilholy is a journalist based in the United Kingdom who has been published in Newsweek, The Times of Israel, and the Spectator. Gilholy writes about international politics, culture, and education.
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