Paul Goble
Staunton, Jan. 24 – Putin’s war in Ukraine has left at least 100,000 Russian soldiers invalids, of whom a minimum of half have undergone amputations and need prosthetic devices. But the Russian economy is incapable of providing them on a timely basis and tens of thousands of Russian soldiers wounded in battle must wait months to be fitted with them.
That is just one of the damning findings Vyorstka journalists Ivan Zhadayev and Olesya Gerasimenko offer in their investigation into the state of prosthetics in the Moscow hospital responsible for treating the most seriously wounded with artificial limbs (verstka.media/reportazh_iz_tsentra_gde_proteziruyut_voyennykh_vernuvshikhsya_s_fronta_bez_ruk_i_nog).
Russian government statistics do no break out those who need prosthetics as a result of the war from all those requiring them. But the two journalists report that demand for prosthetics grew “no more than seven percent annually” between 2013 and 2022, it jumped by 42 percent in 2023, the first full year of the war.
And the Russian government which celebrates those who fight, are heavily injured or die for it in Ukraine hasn’t kept up. Those needing prosthetics have to wait months if not years for such devices, something that is leading to ever more bitterness among the veterans and likely among their relatives as well.
One wounded veteran waiting for prosthetics went to war in 2022 when as he says “patriots” did rather than those who have been paid up to a million rubles (10,000 US dollars). He is still waiting. And while some of his fellows are still super patriotic, others are increasingly critical of Putin and the war.
The Kremlin leader likes to talk about “unexploded bombs” which can threaten Russia. But he seems oblivious that by failing these men after having led them into this unjustified and criminal war, he is planting one under Russian society and indeed under himself.
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Tens of Thousands of Russian Wounded Waiting for Prosthetic Devices
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