Russia’s Interior Ministry has stopped publishing data on deaths resulting from criminal activity, according to the independent analytics group Yesli Byt Tochnim.
The group, which monitors official statistics, said the ministry’s two most recent monthly reports omitted figures on criminal deaths.
The last available data appeared in the ministry’s April bulletin, which recorded roughly 7,100 deaths from criminal causes between January and April, a 1.7% decline compared to the same period the year before.
Analysts said that criminal death figures include not only homicide victims but also people killed in incidents involving safety violations.
There was no immediate comment from the Interior Ministry on why the data was removed.
The change comes just weeks after Russia’s state statistics agency Rosstat stopped publishing monthly data on births and deaths amid growing concerns over the country’s demographic decline and mounting military losses in Ukraine.
Yesli Byt Tochnim previously reported that Russian law enforcement agencies have been quietly scrubbing other public crime data from their websites in recent years, including statistics on crimes involving firearms and explosives.
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