A dispatch by Col. Cassad
Ward in Ukraine military hospital. The mood is not exactly jubilant. (Click to enlarge)
First the story and then his answers to some questions. The anonymity of the source was, of course, preserved (as you know, there is no freedom of speech in Ukraine and one can be hurt or killed for dissent) because he is writing to us from occupied territories. Therefore, first and second names were changed at the request of the source as well as the place in which the described events happened.
About the lucky ones …
2. Career military and mobilized conscripts can’t stand the Right Sector activists, members of the National Guard and other volunteer battalions. In the beginning there were constant fights in the wards. Now they are not just treated in different wards but actually in different buildings.
3. While at rest he received a call. He said that the “Right Sector” activists got drunk and started a brawl. The hospital security tied them up using handcuffs and placed them in a special ward with bars. This is also the norm – compassionate volunteers bring alcohol to them.
4. About volunteers (people who help to collect aid for the wounded). Several “volunteer hundreds” emerged after the start of the punitive operation. They opened up accounts and apparently started collecting money. They request receipts from those people who bring equipment into the hospital (fridges, TVs, ACs), which they later use to get reimbursed. Everyone knows this, even the SBU people who say it openly – “We see everything, we know everything. But we don’t want to touch this now – there will be an outcry!”
5. Oftentimes there are visitors: Rabbit (n.b. the prime minister Arsenii Yatsenyuk), Lyashko, Poroshenko also visited a couple of times. Their personal security detail mock them openly – he knows many of them for a long time. Poroshenko is no longer called gunpowder (n.b. the Russian work “porokh” translates to “gunpowder”) but rather he is now called a “shrimp” – both arthropod and powerless.
6. Wounded soldilers openly told Lyashko and Tyagnybok to go to hell while this senior medical officer was in the room.
7. Everybody is trying to get publicity for helping the wounded. Eldorado (n.b. a Ukrainian department store chain) comes, brings a pair of refrigerators and there are 10 reporters who shoot videos of this process.
8. Volunteer services screw those who need prosthetics especially hard. A separate account is opened for each of them and only manufacturers from Israel or Canada are recommended. And there prosthetics cost 150-300 thousand dollars. At the same time, there are domestic prosthetics of high quality and free of charge. But the most important thing is that the doctors tell their relatives to not get fooled by Israeli prosthetics. Because over time the prosthetic specialist becomes almost a family member. And it is necessary to visit once or twice per year for adjusting, regulating and performing other types of service on the prosthetic. And if yours was made in Israel – you’ll have to go there many times and nobody will give you money to do that. The thing is that money are saved – they are held under interest and the interest is quite good. So they don’t even have to steal anything (n.b. this particular type of interest fraud is a common fraud scheme in the former USSR, the translator recalls several examples from the 90s when interest was collected by private parties for public money that was kept on “buffer accounts”).
10. He also told about cheapskate-fighters who are given a TV for the ward and later they take this TV or a fridge with them once they are released from the hospital. To the question of doctors “Where are you taking this?” The answer is “So what!!? This is mine! They brought it to me!!! ”
11. Several women with many children showed up and immediately married shell-shocked patients and other people in vegetative state. They argued that they’ll help them! And they specifically select those wounded whose brain isn’t fully operational or who is almost dead. So he asks it straight: why would a 35-year-old woman with two children marry a 20-year-old who doesn’t even understand where he is and will never walk again? Their answer is that they marry for subsidies and for the aid that is distributed to wives of perished soldiers.
Ivanov – to normal reporters
Petrov – A military doctor called from the hospital – there are fucking many wounded over the last 2 days.
Ivanov – yeah, according to the news there is hell there…
He was mobilized on March 10. Currently he is under Debalcevo. There’s almost a riot there. There’s a fight every day – they hit each other in the face. And yesterday they even hit their commander in the face. Everybody is nuts. He got sick – a cold. He says that it’s really cold there at night, +8 Celsius. (it is +8 right now… and what happens in Winter?). He asked to pass him medicines against flu in any possible way. They don’t even have aspirin there.
