Cargo 200 (code name)
Cargo 200 is a military code word used in the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet states referring to the transportation of casualties. 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 irreversible 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. 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 Russian military intervention in Ukraine in 2014., the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission has after two and a half years, despite their limited access to the Donbass War conflict zone, counted more than 20 vehicles with a “Cargo 200” inscription used to transport bodies of deceased Russian separatists from Donbass.
