Russian troops who’ve lost limbs helping Vladimir Putin carry out his genocidal ambitions in Ukraine are in for a rude wake-up call when they turn to the state for “rehabilitation.”
One man who lost his left arm in the war returned home and waited patiently for months for his new prosthetic arm promised by the Defense Ministry—but when the day finally came, all he got was a metal rod.
“It’s just a metal stick with a plastic tip!” 48-year-old Vadim Sharipov vented to Radio Free Europe’s Siberian service. “Why should I be happy with a stick instead of a prosthesis?! At first they stalled, then they refused to admit that it was shoddy work, and as time goes on, the muscles will atrophy and then no prosthesis will be needed,” he said, adding that he is now suing in a bid to get a better prosthetic.
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“I told my daughter that a shark bit my arm off when I was swimming in the sea,” Sharipov said in a separate interview with Veter.
The independent media outlet Verstka reported last month that the number of disabled men under the age of 30 in Russia grew by 17,000 in 2022, and authorities planned for a nine-year record of newly disabled men in 2023. The Defense Ministry declared on state-run television late last year that all soldiers who suffer amputations or lost limbs in the war will get the “best” prosthetics.
But authorities now seem unable to keep up with the demand.
While some members of the notorious Wagner Group managed to get fitted out with imported prosthetics in a Wagner-run facility in Anapa earlier on in the war, according to the BBC, some Wagner fighters say they’ve been hung out to dry after the death of mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.
“I went from prison to fight for you, for your country, which provided nothing for me and still provides nothing. I’m seriously wounded. I’m missing one eye, and the other has been operated on,” a shirtless man identified as a Wagner fighter from the Krasnodar region says to Vladimir Putin in a recent video appeal, complaining that he hasn’t been paid his pension and can’t get a job despite receiving a pardon.
“We defended our country and atoned for our sins. Although we’re convicts, we’re not convicts! We are the most just people. We’ll prove to anyone—even you, bald man—that we are respect and Wagner is power!”
