Cargo 200 (Russian: Груз 200, Gruz dvésti) is a military code word used in the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet states referring to the transportation of military fatalities.[1][2][3][4] Officially, the term Cargo 200 is military jargon to refer specifically to the corpses of soldiers contained in zinc-lined coffins for air transportation. Unofficially, Cargo 200 is used to refer to all bodies of the dead being transported away from the battlefield, and has also become a euphemism for irretrievable losses of manpower in a conflict.
The first appearance of Cargo 200 is unknown, except that it came into use in the mid-1980s during the Soviet–Afghan War. The main theory of the term's origin is the Ministry of Defense of the USSR Order No. 200, issued during the on October 8, 1984, coincidentally setting the standardized maximum weight for the air transportation of a deceased soldier's body at 200 kilograms (440 lb). The term saw widespread use in the Soviet military by the late 1980s, spawning the related code words Cargo 300 for the transportation of wounded personnel, and Cargo 100 for the transportation of munitions.
The term Cargo 200 has received new international attention since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014.[3] As of October 2016[update], the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission has after two and a half years, despite their limited access to the Donbas war conflict zone, counted more than 20 vehicles with a “Cargo 200” inscription used to transport bodies of deceased Russian mercenaries and soldiers from Donbas.[citation needed] Cargo 200 was referenced by the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs in the name of their 200rf.com website used to publicize Russian personnel killed and captured during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[5][6][7] Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi was nicknamed "General 200" in reference to the term Cargo 200 due to pursuing bloody Soviet-style military tactics which resulted in heavy Ukrainian casualites during the Battle of Bakhmut.[8]