The State Duma is ready to provide social guarantees for PMC fighters

Soldiers of private military companies perform the same tasks as military personnel, so they should have the same social guarantees, Yury Shvytkin, deputy head of the State Duma Committee on Defense, told Vedomosti (United Russia). He said that the relevant bill has not yet been submitted to the committee, but the deputies are ready to consider it. “If the Supreme Commander said, it means that we will work on it in the near future,” he said.

“I think we will work on these changes in the near future,” Andrey Krasov, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Defense, told Vedomosti (United Russia).

On considering the issue of providing social guarantees to PMC fighters and their families on an equal basis with military personnel, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared February 16 at a meeting with Maria Lvova-Belova, Commissioner for Children’s Rights under the President of Russia.

“Just formulate all your proposals in this direction, we will take them into account when making decisions. Definitely,” he said. Before that, Lvova-Belova pointed out a “small injustice” in which the military, serving under the contract, receive social guarantees, but the PMC fighters do not, although “both of them are heroes.”

Putin noted that both volunteers and contractors, and “those who transferred to military service as part of mobilization” should be in the same situation in terms of providing social guarantees and protective measures.

Since November 2022, all citizens who were mobilized by conscription or participated voluntarily in the SVO received the status of combat veterans with all social preferences, Svetlana Bessarab, a member of the State Duma Committee on Labor, Social Policy and Veterans Affairs, told Vedomosti (United Russia “). “PMCs are not voluntary formations, so I can assume that there were such omissions,” she said.