1/ "The most you can get is a slight injury, if you get something more – that’s it, you will die," says a Russian military paramedic. His comments highlight the terrible state of medical care in the Russian army, which is causing tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. ⬇️
2/ The head of the Kalashnikov Center for Tactical Medicine, Artem Katulin, says that more than half of the Russian soldiers who have died in Ukraine lost their lives because of improperly provided medical care, with a third of amputations due to improper tourniquet application.
3/ 'Important Stories' has interviewed a Russian army paramedic about the poor training and antiquated equipment which has cost many soldiers their lives. Medical training, he says, is minimal even for medics. In 10 years as a paramedic, he only received four training sessions.
4/ Training is even more basic for ordinary soldiers. "Twice a year the army has a class where the paramedic shows us how to put a splint on and how to put bandages on. And in the last class I attended, the paramedic did the bandage wrong. That is, the man himself doesn't know how to do it, and teaches others incorrectly."
5/ He is not the only medic to have complained about the lack of training. I've previously highlighted the account of Russian army doctor Pavel Zelenkov, who has spoken of the fake training he did with his unit, which consisted only of posing for 'photo reports'.
"All medicine was reduced to window dressing. Before a field trip [i.e. an exercise], you get dressed up like for a masquerade, you get photographed – a report is sent to command, everyone returns to their places."
6/ Medical equipment is notoriously bad, as Important Stories' interviewee notes. "What we were issued with on the front line was an ancient Soviet PPI [individual wound dressing bag] (although the Soviet one was still good, but the Russian one was shit) and an Esmarh tourniquet. That's some rubbery red shit that's been lying in talcum powder for 500 years. They gave them to the soldiers and one tube of Promedol. Are you fucking serious?"
7/ "Or now, a lot of people have got their own fucking first-aid kits, but nobody knows how to use them. For instance, there's these shitty domestic hemostatics for burn wounds. And in addition to having to treat the wound itself, you then have to treat the burn. Just using the wrong pressure dressing can cause a lot of blood loss or dirt to get in, which can lead to infection and putrefaction."
8/ He says that the best medical equipment he has used is Israeli and American, which is "very cool, but very expensive". Imported disposable kits to stop arterial bleeding cost as much as 52,000 rubles ($645). "No one in the army buys them, and no one knows how to use them."
9/ His own American-made medical kit "cost 110 thousand rubles ($1,360). Nobody gave me that money. It was bought out of my own money, and my boys contributed. That is, all the normal medicine in the units is collected by people themselves, no one gives anything away."
10/ Most Russian medics appear to be far less well equipped. When paratrooper Pavel Filatyev was evacuated from the front line near Mikolaiv in April 2022, his medic asked him to report that "he doesn't have any syringes and painkillers, there's not even that on the front line."
11/ When Dr Zelenkov arrived at his post, he had a similar experience. "In terms of medical equipment, there was practically nothing there. You only administer first aid and get sent on your way, so there was nothing in line with what the medical unit was initially designed for."
12/ Rather than learning from the army, Important Stories' medic had to learn from his own doctor friends and other combat medics, before teaching his comrades how to perform essential treatments. However, Russian law prohibits him from carrying out life-saving interventions.
13/ "I have the right to provide first aid to a soldier, but if, for example, I understand that an artery has been severed, I can't just take a scalpel, cut it, clamp the artery, fix it, tie it up and prepare a person for immobilisation. I'm not allowed by law to do that. If I do that, they will take him to surgery and write a complaint and put me in jail for having performed a surgical intervention without proper authorisation." He says that this has actually happened to other medics.
14/ He says that soldiers need to learn to help themselves, as they are as good as dead if they sustain anything more than a light injury. He advises his comrades: "
'You will die, no one will help you, no one will come, no one will do anything if you can't do it yourself'. Nobody gives a fuck about the soldier, nobody will do anything about him. That's the main problem with all these traumas. A lot of people die not because they get killed, but because they can't get proper medical care."
ChrisO_wiki