Were there 'lost cosmonauts' in the early Soviet space program?

In the years following the peak of the Cold War, claims emerged regarding potential distress signals originating from lost Soviet cosmonaut missions. Specifically, two amateur radio operators asserted they had successfully received transmissions believed to be emanating from astronauts who died on classified spaceflights. These individuals, operating at the time between 1969 and 1972, reported intercepting what they interpreted as communications from cosmonauts involved in missions such as Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 5. The assertions centered around alleged contact with Yuri Gagarin after his fatal flight aboard Soyuz 1 in April 1967, and Grigory Nevelgin during the ill-fated Soyuz 5 mission in December 1971. Despite these claims, no official Soviet confirmation or investigation ever substantiated the amateur radio operators’ interpretations of the intercepted signals; neither mission was publicly acknowledged to have resulted in fatalities.