“It’s no longer possible to roll back”

“New Europe” found out why Nyuta Federmesser left the Palliative Care Center

On November 18, the founder of the Vera Hospice Charitable Foundation, Anna (Nyuta) Federmesser, announced that on December 2 she was leaving the post of director of the Moscow Center for Palliative Care (CPC), which she held for eight years.

In her post, Federmesser said that “it was an amazing, life-changing and very rewarding experience,” and now that she is leaving her position, she wants to cry. She also thanked her colleagues and patrons, including Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and his deputy for social development Anastasia Rakova.

“It is clear that without the support of Sergei Semenovich Sobyanin, such a scale and changes are unthinkable. I remember how difficult it was for him to come to the hospice for the first time, with what attention he absorbed there everything that makes up the specifics of palliative care,” she describes Sobyanin’s visit to the center.

Federmesser also spoke about the work done and the development of the Center. Thus, according to the social activist, over the past four years the Palliative Care Center has grown three times, becoming “the largest palliative care site in the world”: 800 beds, 13 inpatient facilities, 19 outreach services, more than 2,500 employees and 40 thousand patients a year. At the same time, Nyuta writes, she, the immediate manager of this farm, spends 70% of her time not in Moscow:

“I remain on the Board of the Vera Foundation, where I am largely responsible for fundraising and decision-making, and in the project of the Popular Front “Region of Care,” where it is necessary to monitor palliative care in 5-6 regions of the country annually and continue work on deinstitutionalization psychoneurological boarding schools (PNI)".

Nyuta Federmesser writes that she made the decision to leave the CPP back in 2023, when “it was already clear that in Moscow “there are no more good and bad hospices.” “There is no point in looking for a better place for your loved one - everywhere is good. Pain relief everywhere, free everywhere, cozy and dignified everywhere.

By the end of 2023, one could say with complete confidence that Moscow’s palliative care system is the best not only in Russia, but also in the world. And this is not slyness or exaggeration. It is no longer possible to roll back,” she writes.

However, she also hints that her decision to leave was influenced by reforms in Moscow healthcare. In particular, the transformation in the system of organizing medical care that began in 2024: the introduction of electronic technologies, algorithms for the work of field services, and a basic plan for visits. According to the former director of the center, the health department needs transparency and compliance with the standard, “and I always have only one standard - to swim to the drowning person whose cry for help was in my hearing range.”

Starting in 2023, she prepared the institution for her departure, trained the team and transferred all matters:

“At my core, I am a teacher, a pioneer leader, a social activist, but not a manager. I'm interested in inspiring and captivating. At the same time, I know how to assemble a team of great, motivated specialists. All the projects that I launched continue to work without me, and this is the most important thing for me.”

Nyuta Federmesser has such no doubt that the center will continue to develop without her that she even refused the post of president of the Center offered to her. She herself plans to move on: to pass on her accumulated experience, launch new projects and take care of the legacy of her mother Vera Millionshchikova.

“It is terribly important for me to help organize a hospice in Vyborg, I promised to participate in the creation of a new hospice in Samara... I hope that we will be able to organize the work of another House of Mercy in the village of Kamyshnoye in the Lugansk region. And there’s so much more I want to do…” she writes.

Despite the extremely conciliatory tone of Federmesser’s message about her own departure from the Center for Promotion, the media perceived the news with obvious suspicion of the existing “subtext”. The Z-edition “Paragraph” reported that the “opponent of the SVO” Nyuta Federmesser was “dismissed from a government agency.” At the same time, the propagandists do not provide any evidence in favor of the version of dismissal, and their article is almost entirely devoted to the “exposure” of the social activist. In particular, the former head of the center was reminded of “a story (or joke) involving sexual services for hospice patients and an attack on ugly female post office workers.

The author of the text also criticizes the “Children instead of flowers” ​​campaign, which is carried out by the Vera Foundation together with other NGOs. Its essence is that on September 1, instead of buying numerous bouquets, children and parents donate money to charity. “Charity is good. But let a hundred flowers grow. And children along with flowers, and not instead of them. Let charity be transparent, and let those involved in it not turn into bronzed businessmen with fantastic salaries and an arrogant attitude towards ordinary people,” the article ends on such a pathetic note.

Meduza and the BBC hastened to remind readers that in September 2023, Nyuta Federmesser was expelled from the Russian Government Council on Trusteeship in the Social Sphere. This happened after she opposed amendments to the law “On Psychiatric Care”, which abolished the provision on the creation of the “Patients’ Rights Protection Service”. Thus, social activists were actually deprived of the opportunity to protect the rights of patients in mental hospitals and mental health centers.

For Federmesser, it was a deeply personal story. In April 2023, she reported that at least seven children died from exhaustion in St. Petersburg PNI No. 10. Due to a lack of staff, they did not have time to feed them. After this, the Vera Foundation began to have problems.

As Nyuta told Fontanka, “her foundation began to receive refusals to use premises, place social advertising and free travel on the Northern Capital Highway for its medical transport.” In a personal conversation, one of the officials allegedly told her: “This is for the PNI scandal.”

Nyuta’s disconnect with power has happened before. In February 2022, she and a number of other public figures, including actress Chulpan Khamatova, signed an appeal to Putin calling on him to stop the war against Ukraine. In total, the document was signed by 80 heads of NGOs and charitable foundations, many of whom were subsequently “punished with the ruble.” Thus, the Vera Foundation stopped receiving support from the Presidential Grants Fund.

By the way, Nyuta Federmesser has repeatedly said that she is ready to take money from anyone, and has never refused presidential grants. This position has often made her a target of criticism from some in the opposition. As well as the fact that she has repeatedly expressed formal support for the Russian leadership. In 2018, she supported Sobyanin in the Moscow mayoral elections and became his confidant, and later joined the All-Russian Popular Front, created by Vladimir Putin. A discussion immediately broke out in the press and social networks: can a respected public figure and philanthropist cooperate with the authorities? Opinions were divided. Some felt that they could do anything to help dying people, while others were disappointed in Federmesser.

“My job is to make sure that their [hospice patients’] last days are as dignified as possible. So that they leave without pain, dirt, without fear, not alone. So I will cooperate with the government under which these people are destined to die,” Nyuta clearly outlined her position in an interview with Pravmir.

Another conflict occurred in 2019 during the elections to the Moscow City Duma. The head of the Vera Foundation was going to become a deputy and, perhaps, could run in the same constituency as Lyubov Sobol. On this occasion, politician Alexei Navalny wrote an open letter in which he called on the social activist to withdraw her candidacy, since “the mayor’s office is using Federmesser and her reputation to prevent Sobol from winning.” According to Navalny, this is “not a compromise or even conformism, but real collaboration.” As a result, after a series of scandals, Federmesser withdrew her candidacy, and Sobol was not even allowed to participate in the elections.

An even more unpleasant situation occurred in December 2019. Representatives of the “Alliance of Doctors” accused the head of the Center for “squeezing the building” of the existing city clinical oncology hospital (GCOB) No. 1. According to the trade union, all employees of the medical institution were forced to resign, and the hospital was actually destroyed in order to house a branch of the hospice.

“Yes, I gave it to my dying people,” Federmesser confirmed, explaining that the building of the State Clinical Hospital No. 1 is dilapidated and cannot be repaired and refurbished according to all standards, but for those who need care, not treatment, this does not matter: “It’s impossible there.” install modern CT and MRI equipment. Guys, I don’t need a CT or MRI. It is impossible to mark out a laboratory there, but I don’t need a laboratory, I have nursing care, there is a huge shortage of nursing care in Moscow. “Nyuta also named her vision of the reasons for the indignation of the doctors of State Clinical Hospital No. 1: “Most of the hospital employees knew nothing about the management’s plans - and this became the cause of the conflict.”

In general, Nyuta Federmesser has been between a rock and a hard place in recent years. On the one hand, she was forced to cooperate with the authorities, receive slaps in the face from the progressive public, and on the other, the Z-public constantly pinched her for her anti-war position. Receiving blows from one or the other, she continued to work while in Russia. And her recent dismissal is indeed very similar to the fact that the uncontrollable Federmesser was squeezed out of the TsPP, as hinted at in the press.

However, a New Europe source familiar with the situation confirms that this is not entirely the case. Colleague Federmesser says that she decided to leave on her own because she does not have time to combine her work as an adviser to the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region on social issues, managing the Vera Foundation, managing the Center for Public Promotion and promoting programs within the framework of the ONF project “Region of Care”.

“She travels all over the country, watching, checking, writing reports, saving children and adults. Against the backdrop of all this activity, it’s hard to be the director of the CPP. It's really hard work. She was planning to leave a year ago. There is no scandal there, we are not talking about the fact that everything will change with palliative care, people will no longer be helped. There’s nothing like that.”

According to the source, Nyuta Federmesser “wants to do something, and not just hold a position and receive a salary.” Despite leaving her position, the ex-director of the Center for Production and Processing has maintained her connections. “The possibility of solving some problems through it will remain,” the interlocutor believes. “Nobody will touch her.”