Defense Ministry Decides to Scrap Mandatory Medical Examinations for Contract Soldiers and Mobilized Personnel...

❗️The Defense Ministry has decided to scrap mandatory medical examinations for contract soldiers and mobilized personnel

Russia’s Defense Ministry has proposed abolishing mandatory medical examinations for contract soldiers and mobilized personnel to determine fitness for service. As Verstka noted, this follows from draft amendments to the law published on the legal acts draft portal.

The changes are being made to Article 5.1 of the Federal Law on Military Duty. A new clause will be added there, under which during mobilization, martial law, or wartime medical examinations for those signing a contract and for mobilized personnel will become mandatory only in a number of cases:

🟪If they have injuries (wounds, trauma, contusions).

🟪If they have illnesses included in the list under which they are “subject to being recognized as fit for military service with limitations” (with the exception of foreigners and stateless persons).

🟪In the event of injuries or illnesses under which they are subject to being recognized as unfit for service.

At the same time, the draft says that such injuries or illnesses will be identified during a medical checkup, the procedure for which will be established by the Defense Ministry itself.

Grigory Sverdlin, head of the anti-war project Idite lesom (“Get Lost”), told Verstka that such a measure may be connected to problems with contract recruitment.

“Yes, apparently recruitment of contract soldiers is so bad that they want to remove the mandatory medical examination. If the bill is passed, then medical examinations will be conducted not ‘by default,’ but only in special cases, if there are injuries or a serious illness. And even in those cases there will first be a medical checkup, and the procedure for conducting it will be determined by the Defense Ministry itself,” Sverdlin said.

At the same time, he clarified that the innovation applies only to active servicemen.

🩵Earlier, Verstka reported that the flow of new contract soldiers has collapsed across the country. For example, in Moscow this spring, the pace of recruitment fell by a third. Across the country, by a quarter. To somehow reverse the situation, the authorities are increasing referral payments to recruiters, luring people into contract service with promises of being able to “sit it out in the rear,” and sending agitation teams around the country’s regions. More radical measures are also being discussed: rotation of reservists or a new wave of mobilization.

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