Kremlin has Been Closing Psychiatric Clinics Even Though More than 20 Percent of Ukrainian War Veterans Need Treatment, Doctor Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 23 – Vladimir Putin’s healthcare “optimization” program, a euphemism for the closing of medical facilities across the country, has created a situation in which the Russian government does not have anything like the number of such facilities it needs for the rehabilitation of veterans of the war in Ukraine, Sergey Vetoshkin says.

            In Moscow alone, the psychiatrist says, the Putin regime has already shuttered 14 of the 17 psychiatric clinics which were open there before he seized Ukraine’s Crimea, creating in their place small “memory clinics” that are not capable of addressing the needs of the population there let alone the returning veterans (svpressa.ru/health/article/507734/).

            Given the estimated 20 percent of all veterans of the war who will need treatment, Vetoshkin says, there is no chance that they will get the support they need; and thus their problems will become the problems of Russian society as a whole, problems far greater than the veterans of the Afghan war (“the Afgantsy”) presented at the end of Soviet times.