’Not always timely’

Russian military doctors say injured soldiers who could be saved are dying on the battlefield in Ukraine

Some critically injured Russian soldiers who could have been saved are dying on the battlefield without ever receiving medical attention, according to a new investigation by the independent outlet Verstka. Even Defense Ministry doctors admit that the army’s medical care is poorly organized, with “potentially savable” soldiers not evacuated in time and others sent back to the front lines even when their treatment is unsuccessful. Meduza shares an abridged translation of the outlet’s findings.

Russia’s Defense Ministry claims that Russian soldiers who are wounded on the battlefield receive prompt medical assistance. Officially, the mortality rate for these soldiers doesn’t exceed 0.5 percent and continues to decline. However, these figures don’t include soldiers who couldn’t be evacuated from the battlefield in time, reports Verstka.

According to a Defense Ministry report on Russian military medical service outcomes in 2023, only 0.43 percent of wounded servicemen who received medical assistance died. Yet, there’s another metric military doctors use: the mortality rate among “potentially savable” soldiers — those whose lives could have been saved if they had received medical assistance. The same report indicates that at least 5.2 percent of these Russian soldiers die on the battlefield without ever receiving medical help.

Military doctors, including staff from the Defense Ministry’s Main Military Medical Directorate, acknowledge that in the early stages of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, pre-hospital medical assistance was “not always timely and of sufficient quality.” They state that on the front lines, it has been “impossible” to implement either the “widespread adoption” of emergency medical care, as was done during the USSR’s war in Afghanistan, or the “universal provision of early specialized medical care,” as seen in Russia’s two wars with Chechnya.

According to modern military medical standards, a critically injured soldier should receive proper medical care within one to two hours of being wounded. However, a journal article by Russian military doctors notes that between fall 2022 and spring 2023, the average time to evacuate severely wounded soldiers from the combat zone in Ukraine was 3.5 hours.

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Combat Casualties

Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine predominantly suffer from shrapnel and blast injuries, as well as wounds from ball bearings (used in explosive devices) and other non-gunshot injuries. From February to August 2022, military anesthesiologists at one hospital recorded that 86.5 percent of soldiers and officers brought there were injured by shrapnel from exploding shells, six percent sustained bullet wounds, three percent suffered burns, and 4.6 percent had various other injuries.

Nearly half of the soldiers admitted to the hospital during this period had injuries to their arms or legs, one in five had abdominal wounds, one in 11 had head injuries, and one in every 12 to13 had chest injuries. In the fall of 2023, Deputy Labor and Social Protection Minister Alexey Vovchenko confirmed that limb injuries are the most common, stating that over half of the soldiers who fought in Ukraine and are classified as disabled had amputated arms or legs.

Doctors note that the types of injuries sustained by military personnel have changed over the past 40 years. Soldiers in the invasion of Ukraine are 2.5 times less likely to suffer head injuries compared to Russian soldiers in Chechnya but are twice as likely to have arm and leg injuries. Compared to Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan, Russian soldiers in Ukraine more frequently sustain limb injuries, while abdominal and chest injuries have become less common. Military doctors classify burns, frostbite, bruises, fractures, concussions, and embedded shrapnel or bullets as minor injuries.

Among the soldiers with “minor” wounds brought from the front to one Russian hospital from March 2022 to October 2023, 33 percent had fractures of the ribs, arms, legs, or shoulder and knee joints, and 31 percent suffered first and second-degree burns, frostbite, or other non-penetrating wounds. Traumatic brain injuries and neurological problems affected 20 percent of the patients, while 10 percent were diagnosed with open or closed facial bone injuries and/or temporary hearing loss.

Back to the battlefield

A Russian soldier’s chances of recovery after being wounded in Ukraine depend on many factors: the nature of the injuries, the speed of evacuation, and the hospital. Doctors at the Kirov Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg reported that among those admitted with abdominal wounds, one in twelve (8.4 percent) died, mainly due to multiple organ failure. Most soldiers arrived at the hospital only two to four days after being injured.

In a study, five military doctors found that most Russian soldiers who suffered concussions didn’t regain their hearing in the months following the injury. These soldiers were brought back from the front and hospitalized between March 2022 and October 2023. Only eight percent of those with concussions fully recovered their hearing after treatment.

A third of the soldiers couldn’t understand spoken speech from a distance of one to three meters (about three to 10 feet) even after treatment. Despite this, most soldiers were sent back to the front four to six weeks after hospitalization. Former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu previously stated that 98 percent of wounded and injured soldiers are discharged from hospitals “upon recovery.”

Officials and doctors from the Defense Ministry don’t disclose even approximate data on the number of soldiers who’ve been wounded in Ukraine. The report on military medical service outcomes states that in 2023, 50,000 soldiers underwent rehabilitation (without specifying where they served), up from about 38,000 in 2022.