This is not the Ministry of Health, but a military hospital
We have already written about the adventures of Ministry of Health employees “in civilian life” during the Northern Military District (The Ministry of Health no longer warns). Now we have to cover an even more sensitive topic: the state of military medicine in conditions where not everything is in order in terms of state security.
First, let's go from afar
I have one friend, based on certain objective considerations, we will not mention his first and last name. Not a hero, but he completed his military service quite normally, and was demobilized as a junior sergeant in the Airborne Forces. However, then drugs and crime began.
After he sniffed the “fast” ones, started a fire in the apartment and jumped out of a 4th floor window into a snowdrift, knocking out two teeth with his own knees, the guy was registered in both a mental health clinic and a drug treatment center. Then after this jump, how many times he parachuted in the Airborne Forces, story is silent, he has developed an obvious mental pathology. It lies in the desire for risk when being at dangerous heights.
Having got a job as a low-voltage technician, he, in a less than sane state, told an audience near the nearest store that he was conducting Internet on the roof of a thirty-story building without insurance. Most likely, this was an empty boast, since now even Uzbeks and Tajiks perform high-altitude work wearing safety vests, and not in the “ridge breakers” that they used 15–20 years ago.
In the end, the sergeant, not seeing job prospects in civilian life with such behavior, volunteered for the Northern Military District. After a short stay in training in the Belgorod region, he was sent straight closer to the front line.
The question arises: where did military psychiatrists look if a person is clearly inadequate?
At the front line, such people with a lack of self-preservation instinct do not stay long, leaving from there feet first, and they can even drag their colleagues with them. This is in addition to the fact that a priori those previously convicted of “two-two-eight” and registered in two dispensaries at once cannot be sent even to a penal battalion.
It should be noted here that the series of the same name is one thing, but in reality everything is different. Perhaps only in the Wagner PMC, but this is already a topic, apparently played out after the attempted rebellion and death under unclear circumstances of Prigozhin and Utkin.
However, the above case is quite rare. Of course, many are eager to volunteer, some out of despair in civilian life, some because of patriotic sentiments, some as a private first class, in the RF Armed Forces - Corporal Bunny from the film “Platoon”, for whom in civilian life the direct path is to the bunk or the electric chair.
It is obvious that the main income for corrupt military doctors comes from another category of those liable for military service, the one who is usually congratulated not on February 23, but on March 8. This year, a major scandal related to helping draft dodgers avoid the army occurred in the interdistrict military registration and enlistment office of the Kolpinsky and Pushkinsky districts of St. Petersburg.
Therapist Bogdanov put the “slope,” as they say, on the conveyor belt, and he and his accomplices even developed a fixed tariff for draft dodgers. Bogdanov himself had no less than a fixed 45% of the “ransom”; the rest was distributed among the members of the organized crime group, where, in addition to military doctors, there were also intermediaries “runners” who were looking for the right clients.
Depending on the severity of the fictitious diagnosis, the gang of doctors received from 140 to 200 thousand rubles from each draft dodger. Bogdanov, of course, is not sophisticated in criminal concepts, and an officer with a bunch of crimes committed in the civil service would be in the “red zone”, where people like him are not very well regarded.
Therefore, the would-be doctor made a Solomonic decision to cooperate with the investigation, surrendered all his accomplices, and therefore received only 8 years of probation with a ban on civil service for 5 years, which also constituted his probationary period.
How can one not recall Klim Chugunkin, who received a suspended sentence of 25 years of hard labor. However, this is far from the first such incident in the northern capital during the Northern Military District. So, last year the court sentenced Vyacheslav Kozlov, a general practitioner at one of the St. Petersburg military registration and enlistment offices.
The reason was the same. Just like Bogdanov, Kozlov turned in his accomplices and began to cooperate with the investigation. Since there were fewer participants in the organized crime group he organized than in the case of Bogdanov, Kozlov received a 4-year suspended sentence with a probationary period of 3 years and deprivation of the right to hold positions in the public service for a period of 3 years.
But the matter is not limited to St. Petersburg
There were also abuses of official position in the Kursk, Voronezh and Belgorod regions bordering Ukraine. In the Voronezh region, military personnel called up for military service are complaining en masse about the local military hospital, which, in their opinion, incorrectly determines suitability for military service.
We are talking about wounded soldiers who, after treatment for severe wounds, were sent back to the front line. Moreover, many complain about improper treatment. For some, doctors even refused to perform operations to remove fragments, but no motivation was put forward for such decisions.
And in all cases, attempts to go to court were unsuccessful. What is noteworthy is that last year it was easier for military personnel to achieve the truth through the courts. In 2023, the garrison military courts of the Voronezh and Kursk regions made 15 decisions on incorrect medical examination.
The Belgorod region is territorially under the jurisdiction of the Kursk Military Court, so such incidents occurred there too. A local scandal involving Kuznetsov, a conscript called up for military service, received particular resonance.
The military medical commission did not take into account a total of five diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. Who was right and who was wrong is now unclear, because military doctors found evidence that Kuznetsov complained of poor vision and joint pain. As a result, the court sided with them, while human rights organizations sided with Kuznetsov.
It is apparently now impossible to find out for sure whether Kuznetsov is a draft dodger, or whether the doctors violated his rights.
How protected are the rights of military doctors themselves, among whom there are many who conscientiously perform their duties?
A typical episode that shows that they too may be victims of corruption occurred in Kozelsk, Kaluga Region, where military doctor Yuri Evich was almost brought to trial for discrediting the army.
A senior lieutenant of the DPR medical service, who has a medal “For Courage,” had the imprudence to give a lecture on tactical medicine to employees of the Russian Guard in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. During the three-hour lecture, Evich made a number of critical statements, which were taken out of context by one of the officials of the Russian Guard and mentioned in a statement to the court.
Since the case is classified, nothing specific about these statements is known, but, most likely, it was about the mess in tactical medicine, to which Evich devoted his whole life. Military correspondents, bloggers, and direct participants in the conflict in Donbass and North Military District stood up for the military surgeon.
As a result, everything ended in rejected material, since law enforcement and judicial authorities did not find evidence of a crime.
Thus, we can conclude that not everything is smooth in military medicine today. Some are engaged in corruption, while others are trying to be imprisoned or fined for telling the truth.
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