Russia approves the Standard for Emergency Mass Burials in Time of War and Peace

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December 21, 2021 The Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations (militarized body, similar to the Italian Civil Protection) has developed and approved the State Standard for emergency mass burials in times of war and peace which specifies the requirements for burials mass. In other words, they are mass graves.

The Standard establishes the surface of a mass burial which cannot exceed 40 hectares of land, it cannot be located near waterways used for bathing or for domestic water intake. The space between the bodies must be half a meter vertically and horizontally, while the spaces between the bodies must be filled with layers of earth and branches.

When choosing burial places for bodies, urban development norms, distance from residential buildings, features of the relief and source of water supply should be taken into account.

In addition, the document contains instructions for the organization of mass graves. The decision to bury in a mass grave is made if the Sanitary and Epidemiological Service has issued an opinion on the matter.

Removal of the remains from a mass grave, according to the Standard, is only possible if the regional authorities decide to rebur all those buried there.

The Standard proposes as an illustrative example a case in which a thousand corpses must be buried within three days.

The document requires regional authorities to stock up on coffins, body bags and disinfectants in advance, and describes the formation of emergency burial teams.

Those who have died of particularly dangerous infections are required to be buried in galvanized and hermetically sealed coffins. People with a high radioactivity index can be buried in specially designated areas.

It should be noted that such a document never existed in both the USSR and post-communist Russia.

The timing of the approval and entry into force of the Standard is also surprising: it was approved on the eve of the Christmas holidays which in Russia can last until January 13-14 and becomes operational from February 1.

The regular procedure for the entry into force of Russian national standards does not establish the fixed period for the entry into force of the document, but from practice it can take 5-6 months, or even a year, before a standard enters into force and becomes operating.