Vladimir Putin’s propagandists can’t hide the growing number of disabled war veterans struggling with inadequate or non-existent replacement limbs.
During my first winter in Russia, 13 years ago, I was picking my way through an icy Sennaya Square in St. Petersburg and saw the torso of a legless man being zipped into a body bag. After less than a year in Russia, it was not the first dead body I’d seen on the street and I was starting to assume it was “normal.”
But one of my Russian friends turned to me, eyes wide open, and said, “oh my God Aliide, he’s dead.”
Her reaction suggested it was perhaps not that normal, but the fact he was just a torso absolutely was. Men missing their legs in camouflage clothing became a frequent sight over the next few years, and so did the sight of men moving along metro platforms on low-slung pieces of board with wheels.
Russian media would deny these people were “real” veterans — saying that while they claimed to have served in Chechnya or Afghanistan, they had actually lost their limbs from frostbite after passing out drunk in the cold. Some, it was claimed, had been put to work by organized crime syndicates.
That a fair number might really be veterans was unthinkable to many, and it remains the same even today. A man dressed in fatigues and begging in the metro was recently reported to police for “discrediting the army” after another passenger refused to believe he had participated in Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. The woman argued that because the government looked after its wounded, the man must be a fraud. His very presence was discrediting the nation, she said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has not disclosed its personnel losses since shortly after the full-scale invasion. However, Ukrainian and Western estimates suggest more than 700,000 Russians casualties, of which perhaps 300,000 are too severely wounded to return to service. Meanwhile, some 370,000 Ukrainian troops have been wounded in Ukraine, President Zelenskyy said in December, and a senior British general has said Ukraine has more than 70,000 amputees.
Ukraine offers around $20,000 per limb to its wounded for prosthetics but the Russian reality is much harsher. The wounded are often treated in substandard military hospitals — as opposed to civilian facilities — which can increase the progression of complications like gangrene and make amputations more likely.
This doesn’t mean they are all out of action. Some amputees return to active service as drone operators, for example, and there are initiatives to encourage this, including a center in the south of Moscow that can house up to 22 people learning drone skills.
Russian media has reported that 90% of amputees want to return to the front lines. While this figure should be treated with extreme caution, it is often easier for Moscow to send wounded soldiers back to the front line than support their health needs at home.
Russia’s prosthetics market used to be dominated by foreign companies, and imports from abroad were available to those able to procure them. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian deaths later, sanctions have forced a change and the growth of domestic suppliers.
While imported products used to account for up to three quarters of all deliveries of biogenic prostheses, the share of Russian products rose to 50% in 2022.
Even so, Russia still remains reliant on other countries for the parts to produce prosthetic limbs. “There is a serious dependence on Chinese and Taiwanese imports,” Evgeny Borisov, partner and development director of the investment company Kama Flow, told Russian business outlet RBK.
And, despite a growing number of startups working on “hi tech” prosthesis, low tech, low price solutions still dominate.
Paul Goble’s Window on Eurasia blog reported last year that Russia was still not producing enough prosthetics to meet demand. Despite Kremlin-friendly media lauding domestic progress, video footage circulating on Russian Telegram channels shows veterans describing their prosthetics as “useless plastic trash” or barely functional.
“Without an elbow joint it’s impossible to control it,” one tells the camera as he jerks his prosthesis around. Another clip shows an amputee learning to walk on a leg that appears to be made of plastic bottles. Furthermore, corruption in the healthcare field is increasing in some areas since the Russia began its full-scale invasion, e.g. in Tatarstan.
While Russia cannot meet the physical needs of its disabled fighters, it does still celebrate them with jingoism and special activities featuring its supposedly neutral Paralympic athletes. After February 2022, Russian and Belarusian athletes were banned from the Paralympics, though permitted to compete as neutrals the following year.
Alongside physical disabilities, Russia’s domestic systems have to deal with a range or other effects of the fighting. The war on Ukraine has seen a spike in returning soldiers suffering mental disorders, PTSD and addiction issues.
Meduza reported in August 2023 that soldiers were taking amphetamines for long periods of time to sustain their capacity to fight at the front, and returning from the war with severe drug and alcohol dependence.
As more and more men with physical and mental disabilities return to Russia’s villages, towns and cities, it is getting harder for Putin’s regime to conceal the true cost of Russia’s war and assure people that the state is taking care of its fighters.
By Aliide Naylor. Aliide Naylor is the author of ‘The Shadow in the East’ (Bloomsbury, 2020). She lived in Russia for several years and now reports from the Baltic states and Ukraine. Article and pictures first time published on CEPA web page. Prepared for publication by volunteers from the Res Publica - The Center for Civil Resistance.
