[Salon] Ukraine - The Real Story Of High Disability Numbers

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/10/ukraine-how-disability-numbers-do-tell-a-story.html#more

Ukraine - The Real Story Of High Disability Numbers

October 16, 2024

Like others here to follow Simplicius' substack Situation Reports on the war Ukraine. While at times lengthy and speculative they provide a good summary and dozens of sources.

Yesterday Simplicius tweeted :

SIMPLICIUS Ѱ @simpatico771 - 21:18 UTC · Oct 15, 2024

Did Zelensky's wife just admit AFU losses? 300k disabled forming 15-20% of total WIA would be 1.5M wounded. And 1.5M WIA forming 3:1 to 5:1 ratio to KIA should make for 300-500k KIA.
Image

The quoted tweet is wrong though and deserves a correction.

bigger

Simplicius is quoting Olena Zelenska (Олена Зеленська @ZelenskaUA), the wife of the (former) president of Ukraine. Yesterday Zelenska indeed tweeted about disabilities in Ukraine but the quoted tweet, about 3 million Ukrainians with disabilities, has since been deleted. (It has also been quoted elsewhere, so we do know that it did existed.)

The cited 'news' of 3 million Ukrainian's with disabilities is not news. It had been officially announced on September 19 2023:

Ivan Katchanovski @I_Katchanovski - 23:59 UTC · Sep 19, 2023

At least 300,000 people, primarily military, became disabled during #RussiaUkraineWar: "During the year and a half of the full-scale invasion, the number of Ukrainians with disabilities increased by 300,000. Previously, 2.7 million people with disabilities lived in Ukraine, and now this figure has reached 3 million. This was announced by the Minister of Social Policy." https://life.pravda.com.ua/society/2023/09/19/256633/

Now, thirteen month later, the real number will be much higher. But the astonishing increase in the number of officially disabled people in Ukraine is only slightly related to the number of wounded Ukrainian soldiers. It is simply an _expression_ of the corruption typical for the Ukrainian government and its wider society.

Even completely healthy men in Ukraine are eager to be declared disabled because it allows them to escape military service. To achieve that status huge amounts of bribes are paid to the relevant commissions and doctors.

A recent Starna piece took a deeper look into this (edited machine translations):

Corruption schemes in MSEC. Who receives millions of disability payments?

The number of corruption scandals surrounding Medical and Social Expert Commissions (MSEC) has significantly increased in Ukraine. When searching the apartments of medical experts, law enforcement officers find huge million-dollar stashes in foreign currency, and MSEC members with modest salaries are found to have expensive real estate, including abroad, and businesses registered for close relatives.

Strana found out how the MSEC's corruption schemes work.

There are three official degrees of disabilities in Ukraine. The commission decides, with the help of medical expert testimony, under which category a person falls. Bribes are paid for the various degrees. A temporary disability status is cheaper but has to be renewed every year, a permanent one is more expensive.

According to Strana's sources in the police, after the outbreak of the war, a peculiar price list for assigning disabilities to potentially mobilized men appeared in the MSEC.

The first group – from 8 to 10 thousand dollars, the second - 7 to 8 thousand, the third - from 5 thousand up. The amount of bribes varies depending on the region, and most of them were taken by MSEC members in large cities. Part of the bribes - from 500 to a thousand dollars - went to intermediaries who found those who wanted it.

The most popular diseases for fictitious assignment of disability groups were neuropsychiatric, brain and musculoskeletal diseases.

However fake assignments of disability groups cannot be carried out without the support of "related parties" - trusted doctors in specialized state clinics and diagnostic centers - radiologists, magnetic resonance imaging specialists. To assign a disability group, you need grounds in the form of a serious diagnosis with a medical history and conclusions of doctors. Therefore, the bribes had to be shared, but the main share, up to 70 percent of the amount, remained to MSEC members.

After the entry into force of the law on tougher mobilization, disability prices have risen sharply. And now disability "costs" from 10 to 20 thousand dollars.

There are two other categories where bribes are flowing.

People who have to care for a disabled relative are also excepted from military service. Men who have an elderly mother do seek to have her disability status increased to gain an exception for themselves:

The amount of bribes for granting the right to deferral to relatives of disabled people is slightly less. From 6 to 10 thousand dollars. The scheme of this kind is quite simple – for a bribe, a previously fully capable disabled person of the first or second group receives the status of a person in need of care. After that, the disabled person points to the person who is ready to provide him with care. Next, the MSEC issues a document on caring for a disabled person and, on the basis of such a document, the man receives a deferral in the mobilization office

The huge increase of the number of Ukrainians with disability status is thus not a consequence of people wounded due to the war. Their number probably does not exceed the number of disabled people who die over the years. The reason for the increase is the systemic corruption in Ukraine which can seemingly be found in any government office. There is also corruption involved in gaining such lucrative government positions.

The 300,000+ additionally disabled may well have paid an average of $7,500 to gain that status. This sums up to $2.25 billion that have been distributed within the system.

In general, we are talking about huge corruption flows in the tens of millions of dollars received by corrupt officials of MSEC, which are structurally part of the system of the Ministry of Security of Ukraine.

According to the source of Strana in the MSEC, part of this money is transferred by the heads of commissions to their superiors-functionaries of the Ministry of Health.

Therefore, the amount of bribes for positions in the MEC after the war also went through the roof - from 20 thousand dollars for a member of the commission to 100 thousand dollars for the post of head of the inter-district MEC.

The disabilities numbers, which Simplicius is using to estimate the number of Ukrainian soldiers wounded in the war, do tell a story. But it is only tangentially related to the number of people who really get wounded.

Posted by b on October 16, 2024 at 10:48 UTC | Permalink