Wounded soldiers began to be returned to the front without doctors' permission

As the Agency found out, in Russia there is a practice of sending wounded servicemen to the combat zone without the decision of the military medical commission (VVK). The soldiers are returned to the front with shrapnel in their limbs and shot through the lungs. According to lawyers and human rights activists, this is contrary to the law.

Details. Olga Demicheva, a member of the Presidential Human Rights Council and head of the Doctor Liza's Fair Aid organization, told RIA Novosti on Tuesday that doctors from two clinics in Moscow and Donetsk asked her to figure out why undertreated patients were sent to the front instead of rehabilitation and aftercare. Demicheva said that she and her colleagues would look into the issue.

• These are not isolated cases - after February 2022, the system for assigning categories of fitness for service was destroyed in Russia, Valentina Melnikova, executive secretary of the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers, told the Agency. Instead, a practice has developed where people with serious injuries are sent back to the zone of military operation all year round without the decision of the VVK.
• It is the VVK that assigns categories G (temporarily unfit, in need of treatment) or D (unfit with deregistration). The regulation on military medical examination (approved by a government decree) states that in wartime, “an examination to resolve the issue of fitness for military service ... is carried out at the end of treatment in a hospital, regardless of its duration.” The commission may issue a conclusion on temporary or complete unfitness. However, after the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, instead of a commission, unit commanders often send servicemen after the hospital to the front, Melnikova said. According to the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers, there are "unacceptably many" such cases.
• Melnikova cited several cases that became known to the organization as an example: two military men who were treated for two months after severe lung injuries, the commanders said that they would not send them to the commission, but would send them to the combat zone. The same thing happened to several servicemen who received shrapnel wounds to their limbs, and these fragments have not been removed.
• The Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers is also aware of cases of return to Ukraine after treatment of patients with ulcers and those who had suffered heart attacks and strokes even before the start of the military operation. Melnikova says that it is impossible to call the military with such diseases full-fledged fighters and most often they cannot participate in a military operation.
• The Russian military may have a document that guides them when sending the wounded to the front. The Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers is aware of the existence of guidelines for medical examination during mobilization, which were prepared in 2022 by the main military medical department of the Ministry of Defense (according to the Union, this document is not public, the "Agency" was not able to independently confirm its existence). According to Melnikova, the document contains the phrase: “Medical examination of citizens called up for military service for mobilization is carried out according to column III of the disease schedule.” “And this is the “officer” column, everyone is fit for service there,” she said.
• Director of the human rights group “Citizen. Army. Right,” Sergei Krivenko told the Agency that if a serviceman, after treatment in a hospital, is sent immediately to the front instead of the VVK, then “it is necessary to demand a transfer to a unit, to a point of permanent deployment. On this basis, refuse to go to the zone of a special military operation, write a report.” From the point of view of the law, military injuries and treatment for them are sufficient grounds for holding an IHC, lawyer Nikifor Ivanov, a member of the Agora international human rights group, told the Agency. If injured servicemen are sent back to the war zone, it is certainly a violation of their rights, he said.
• The unwillingness of the military to send the wounded for examination may indicate that the authorities want to save on payments to military personnel. The fact is that the VVK makes conclusions about whether a military injury caused injuries and diseases. According to the law, military personnel who have received a military injury can apply for several payments, including lump sum, monthly and insurance, Ivanov recalls.

Context. Western sources speak of heavy losses of the Russian army. In mid-November, US Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley said Russia's losses in killed and wounded were 100,000. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation last called the losses of the Russian army in September 2022 - 5937 people.

• President Vladimir Putin promised that the wounded would receive a lump sum of 2.968 million rubles if they were declared unfit for military service and monthly compensation in case of disability. At the same time, additional payments to the wounded in the amount of 3 million rubles will be provided.