A Russian military blogger dies after criticizing the army's losses

A pro-war Russian military blogger died Wednesday, his lawyer said, after the blogger wrote that the country's military pressured him to delete a post exposing the extent of losses in a recent battle in Ukraine.

The blogger, Andrei Morozov, claimed in his post that Russia had lost 16,000 men and 300 armored vehicles in its attack on the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, which the Russians captured last week. He deleted the post on Tuesday after saying it was a campaign of intimidation against him.

The next morning, Mr. Morozov published a series of messages on Telegram in which he detailed the complaints he had received from the Russian military command and Kremlin propagandists about his exposé. At the posts he threatened to end his life.

His lawyer, Maksim Pashkov, confirmed the death in a written response to questions. He did not specify a cause.

Mr Morozov's death was reported earlier on Wednesday by Russian state media, a pro-Russian official in occupied Ukraine, and several prominent Russian military bloggers, a loose community of veterans, pro-government war correspondents and military experts who have become an important source of information about the war in Russia.

Such critical ultranationalist bloggers were initially tolerated during the war: they supported the Russian army and drawn attention problems for his troops. But they were suppressed afterwards the mutiny last year from Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who built the paramilitary force known as Wagner and espoused similar views.

Mr. Prigozhin died in a plane crash last August that Western officials have blamed the Kremlin. Another prominent ultranationalist blogger, Igor Girkin, was jailed on charges of extremism, prompting other lesser-known critics to largely toe the official line.

The harassment described by 44-year-old Morozov also comes as the Russian government tries to clamp down on remaining expressions of dissent after the death of opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny last week.

Government has arrested hundreds of people attempting to lay flowers at makeshift memorials or otherwise pay public tribute to Mr Navalny. On Tuesday, the government said she had been arrested a dual American and Russian citizen on charges of treason. A advocacy group said the accusation stemmed from a $50 donation to the Ukrainian war effort.

Also on Tuesday, Ukrainian officials confirmed this the death of a Russian military defector, who was found dead with gunshot wounds in Spain. The Russian government has not taken responsibility, but the head of Russia's foreign spy service called the victim on Tuesday: Maksim Kuzminov, a 'moral corpse'.

The blogger Morozov's associates did not allege foul play in their public tribute, claiming he shot himself. But in the messages published shortly before his death, Mr 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. “Their final argument: 'You're not going to change anything!'

Mr Morozov said he decided to remove the post about Avdiivka after receiving a request from an unnamed colonel, who told him that otherwise his unit would not receive new equipment.

“I will execute myself, if no one has the courage to commit this small act themselves,” Mr Morozov added, in an apparent reference to his critics.

Federal Russian officials had not commented on his death as of Wednesday afternoon.

Mr. Morozov, a staunch supporter of the invasion, said he made Avdiivka's losses public to draw attention to the plight of Russian forces.

His messages describe a Russian campaign to take the city at all costs. He said one regiment, a Russian army unit that normally numbers about 2,000 soldiers, was “obliterated to zero.” He also said wounded soldiers who tried to convey the extent of losses to civilian officials have been ignored.

Ukrainian commanders were able to divert most of their forces from Avdiivka before the Russians could encircle them, Morozov wrote. Senior American officials told The New York Times that a hundred Ukrainian soldiers were still captured in the retreat.

Mr. Morozov, a longtime nationalist commentator, started blogging on LiveJournal, which was popular in Russia in the 2000s. In those more tolerant days, the site served as a platform for dissidents from across the political spectrum, including Mr Navalny.

After Russia's occupation of parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014, Mr. 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 people. Many of them became prominent supporters of Russia's large-scale invasion in February 2022 targets of Ukrainian assassination plots.

Mr. Morozov served in a pro-Russian militia in the occupied Luhansk region and later began publishing on Telegram under the name “We Hear From Yanina,” a reference to news from afar from a book by Alexander Dumas published in the Soviet Union became popular. The blog combined ultranationalist rhetoric with criticism of the perceived corruption and aloofness of Russia's leadership, which Mr. Morozov blamed for the country's military setbacks.

Mr. Morozov was a rare critical voice in the once boisterous, competitive community of Russian military bloggers. Despite his support for the Russian war effort, he appears to have had no illusions about finding justice in his death.

“The official investigation will determine everything, ha ha,” he wrote in one of his last messages.

Oleg Matsnev research contributed.