Today, there are practically no large-scale bloody wars, but mothers and wives continue to receive notifications marked “cargo 200” or “cargo 300”, informing them of the death of their men in the army or localized military conflicts. They are also found in civilian life. What does this terminology actually mean?
Cargo 200
When transporting the bodies of killed or deceased people, it is customary to indicate the mark "200" in the accompanying documentation. A similar practice has been introduced since the days of the Afghan war, when the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation issued a decree on the rules for transporting the dead, which was issued under this number. The word "cargo" was already added by Russian pilots, encrypting their messages to the air traffic control service so that the enemies would not understand what load was flying on board - after all, in those days, only the bodies of the dead, transported by plane, were called "cargo 200".
Today, the mode of transport used to transport the dead to the final destination does not matter at all.
However, there is another version of the appearance of this designation. According to her, the figure 200 indicates the approximate body weight along with the zinc coffin and uniforms. According to the soldiers, the coffin alone weighed about 150 kilograms, but in fact no one ever weighed the "load 200" - in the army, such manipulations are considered a real blasphemy.
Cargo 300
Cargo 300 is a military term for a wounded soldier being transported from a hot spot. This name began to be used after the Afghan war - when registering the transportation, it was necessary to fill in the model form No. 300. Today, it is often found in negotiations between the special services and the military, denoting with this term the number of wounded soldiers who must be taken out of the battlefield.
When transporting coffins with the bodies of the deceased by rail, the term "cargo 300" denotes a conventional weight of 300 kilograms.
The above designations are always indicated according to the rules of cargo transportation exclusively in the waybills and nowhere else. This is the sending of a coffin or urn with ashes from the place of death to the desired destination. "Cargo 200" and "Cargo 300" can be delivered with or without escort. For delivery, trains, airplanes and road transport are used - while sending cargo by plane across the ocean is the most costly, therefore, relatives cannot always receive the body of a person who died abroad in the absence of a sufficient amount of money. Transportation by rail is more affordable, but it takes much longer, which negatively affects the body and nerves of relatives.
