Russia-Ukraine War Live News: Mariupol, Putin and the Latest Updates

“They don’t want to talk to us,” Maksim Savin, 32, said in an interview about the quest to find the whereabouts of his youngest brother Leonid, 20, a conscript. “We are grieving; they drafted our little brother and most likely will never give him back.”

At least 10 families have publicly voiced their frustration about getting conflicting reports about whether their sons are alive, missing or dead. Their demands, made on social media or to news organizations, could hurt public support for the war effort ordered by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

The official silence on the fate of the Moskva’s crew is part of a larger campaign by the Kremlin to suppress bad news about the invasion and control the narrative that Russians receive on its progress. Mr. Putin has blocked access to Facebook and many foreign news outlets, and enacted a law to imprison anyone spreading “false information” about the war.

The cause of the sinking was disputed, with Russia claiming that an ammunition magazine exploded and then the damaged ship sank while under tow in rough seas. Ukraine said it hit the vessel with two Neptune missiles, an assertion that U.S. officials corroborated. Whatever the case, the loss of one of the biggest warships since World War II has been an embarrassment for Russia.

Independent Russian news outlets based outside the country have reported that about 40 men died and another 100 were injured when the warship was damaged and sank. Those reports quoted an unidentified official and the mother of one sailor who died. In addition, the wife of an older midshipman confirmed his death to Radio Liberty, a U.S. government network based outside Russia.

Many of the missing crew members were conscripts, a sensitive subject in Russia since the war in Chechnya, when young soldiers with little training were often thrown into battles and died in droves, souring public support for the war. “A few hundred” soldiers are still not accounted for from the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s, said Alexander Cherkasov, the former chairman of the Memorial Human Rights Center, a group based in Moscow that was disbanded this month because of a court order.

“No one cares about the soldiers,” he said, and the restrictions put on nongovernmental organizations means it is now virtually impossible for them to do the tracing work, he said.

Mr. Putin said repeatedly that conscripts who had to serve a year in the military would not be deployed in Ukraine, a statement contradicted by battlefield casualties.

The Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia, which dates back to the Chechen wars, confirmed that it is receiving requests to search for missing soldiers. The organization declined to comment further, citing a law against sharing information about soldiers with foreign organizations.

Parents of crewmen on the Moskva, named after Russia’s capital, have expressed outrage at what they described as an official runaround.

“We, the parents, are interested only in the fate of our children: Why did they —being conscripted soldiers — end up in this military operation?” said Dmitry Shkrebets, whose son Yegor, 19, worked as a cook on the Moskva.

In an interview, Mr. Shkrebets was reluctant to talk further, but on Sunday he posted far harsher statements on VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook.

Initially, officers told him that Yegor was among the missing, he said.

“Guys, went missing on the high seas?!!!” he wrote. “I asked directly why you, the officers, are alive, and my son, a conscript soldier, died?”

Mr. Shkrebets has since started collecting testimony from other families who cannot locate their sons. “The more we write, the harder it will be for them to remain silent about what is happening,” he wrote on Wednesday.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said on Tuesday he that he was not authorized to release any information about missing sailors, and referred questions to the Defense Ministry.

The ministry did not respond to requests for comment. It released a video on Saturday that purported to show Adm. Nikolai Yevmenov, the commander of the Russian Navy, meeting with men described as the crew of the Moskva lined up in…