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1/ Russian soldiers and their relatives are reportedly being cheated out of compensation for deaths and injuries. Medical authorities are said to be misdiagnosing injuries and declining to issue medical certificates, and are sending wounded soldiers back to the front line. ⬇️
2/ The "We can explain" (MO) Telegram channel reports that hospitalised soldiers are being given wrong diagnoses and denied compensation payments. One man, a professional soldier with 7 years' army experience, suffered a serious shrapnel wound which damaged arteries in his arm.
3/ His wife says that she applied for compensation from insurance and the local governor's fund for wounded soldiers, but was turned down by both. She says she was told that "the governor said not to pay money for bumps".
4/ The insurance was refused because the medics had diagnosed the wrong type of injury. MO reports that "this is done specifically for almost everyone with minor and moderate wounds." The shrapnel was not removed from her husband's arm and he was sent back to the front line.
5/ Another man from Chuvashia, a 15 year veteran of the army, suffered a contusion and developed severe varicose veins. His mother says: "After the contusion he should have gone straight to hospital, but he was in the combat zone for another month."
6/ "He went to hospital when his legs could no longer walk due to varicose veins. The guys carried him out of the combat zone."
After being treated at a field hospital, then transferred to a hospital in Samara, he was sent back to the front line despite his medical problems.
After being treated at a field hospital, then transferred to a hospital in Samara, he was sent back to the front line despite his medical problems.
7/ His doctor didn't give him a medical certificate. "And without it, what can we do? We have already resigned ourselves," his mother says.
8/ The wife of a soldier from Primorsky Krai received a call from a hospital in Rostov which told her to "pick up your vegetable" after he was concussed for a third time. She received a medical certificate for him, but the doctor in charge grabbed it from her and ripped it up.
9/ "He ripped this sheet from me, tore it up and said that my husband had been misdiagnosed and that in fact he had an acute respiratory infection," she says. She took him to two other hospitals to have his diagnosis confirmed. He is still undergoing treatment.
10/ Despite his injuries and being recognised with a medal as a combat participant, he has received no compensation. "We have applied for insurance and the governor's payment, but so far there is nothing," his wife says.
11/ Compensation for the dead seems to be equally elusive. Many complaints have appeared on regional governors' social media pages: "We can't get anything! .... What did my brother die for, giving his duty to his motherland?"
12/ In a decree issued in March 2022, Putin stipulated that relatives of those killed in the war are to receive insurance benefits and a lump-sum payment of more than 7 million rubles ($86,700), in addition to federal and local government payments.
13/ The insurance payments are supposed to come from SOGAZ, a company closely linked to Putin. As MO notes, "its major shareholders include Putin's friend Yury Kovalchuk with his wife and business partners (32%) and Putin's nephew Mikhail Shelomov (12%)."
14/ However, many relatives report long delays in getting anything from SOGAZ. One woman has been trying to get an insurance payment for five months, which the company says is because the army keeps sending it incorrect documents.
15/ "SOGAZ has repeatedly returned the documents back to them (to the unit), they, in turn, keep sending them incorrectly," she says. "And this has been going on for months. Now I am getting help from the governor's aide. I hope this horror will end soon."
16/ Another woman says: "It's a mess everywhere, no one wants to work. On 28 March, they called me from my unit to find out where my husband was. The warrant officer told me that my husband was on leave in Kamchatka." He had actually died on 27 January.
17/ The body of a mobilised man from Vladivostok who died on 10 January was taken to Primorsky Krai but, says his wife, "We had to contact his commander ourselves, otherwise they would not say anything. Nothing has been received on the payments yet." /end
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