Validity must be – Newspaper Kommersant No. 189 (7390) dated 10/12/2022

The Presidential Council for Human Rights (HRC), it became known to Kommersant, is preparing a package of proposals to the government of the Russian Federation regarding the procedure for partial mobilization. Human rights activists insist, in particular, on the introduction of military medical commissions with the participation of civilian doctors to assess the functional fitness of reservists. In addition, the HRC intends to ask the government to establish “clear criteria for armor” from mobilization. In the interests of the army, it was proposed to use Russian artists – they are proposed to be “sent to the front and to new territories”, since “people there have not seen holidays for a long time.”

Mandatory medical examinations, which will assess the health of those mobilized, is one of the key proposals to the government of the Russian Federation. This was told to Kommersant by a member of the HRC, Kirill Kabanov, after the approval of the theses of the document with the head of the council, Valery Fadeev. We are talking about the need to involve civilian doctors, explained Mr. Kabanov. To do this, the Ministry of Defense needs to make procedural changes – to issue an order on the work of military medical commissions during the period of mobilization. In fact, the HRC proposes that the government regulate the same procedure as during conscription campaigns. “A person will be able to refuse, if he considers himself healthy, sign the relevant documents and go (to the special operation zone.— “b”), but there must be an opportunity to undergo a medical examination,” Kirill Kabanov explained. “We understand that in the regions people over the age of 35–40 years old could never go to the hospital. And for the mobilization of such people, an assessment of health is needed – the musculoskeletal system, heart, lungs.

We note that experts have been talking about the need (and the absence in a number of regions) of mandatory medical examinations for mobilized experts since the announcement of partial mobilization on September 21. Attempts by the reservists to challenge the conscription in court without holding a military medical commission have so far remained unsuccessful. Commenting on such a court denial in Perm, Kirill Kabanov previously explained that regional ombudsmen are turning to the HRC with complaints about the lack of medical control. He mentioned “cases of conscription of people with severe chronic diseases or unverified disabilities that the commission could confirm.” Lawyer Konstantin Markin told Kommersant that he had encountered complaints from the military command about the arrival of mobilized garrisons who had not undergone a medical examination. According to him, the absence of medical examinations during the mobilization is “a direct violation of the law.”

The HRC insists on the need for change, including against the backdrop of scandals with the death of mobilized people. So, on Tuesday it became known about the death of a 27-year-old reservist from the Chelyabinsk region in the military town of Yekaterinburg. The Military Investigation Department of the TFR began an investigation. Earlier, Kommersant talked about the death of two mobilized in the Sverdlovsk region upon their arrival at the military garrison: this situation attracted the attention of the Ombudsman of the Russian Federation Tatyana Moskalkova.

Another HRC proposal to the government concerns payments to the mobilized. Recall that one-time payments from September 22 appoint the authorities of the regions. Moscow was the first to announce additional support measures, setting, in particular, a monthly allowance for those mobilized in the amount of 50,000 rubles. One-time payments of 100 thousand rubles. were introduced in the Tula, Murmansk, Irkutsk, Belgorod and Leningrad regions, Adygea and the Krasnodar Territory; in the Rostov region, the payment is 150 thousand rubles; in the Crimea and Sevastopol – 200 thousand rubles each; in YaNAO, Chukotka and Sakhalin – 300 thousand rubles each. At the same time, in most regions, they plan to pay money not from the budgets, but from funds created, among other things, by large industrial companies.

“Payments have been introduced in a little more than 20 regions, in the rest there is nothing like that, although the breadwinners of families also leave there,” says Kirill Kabanov. “It turns out inequality, although everyone should be equal before the law. Based on the fact that the average regional payment is 100 thousand rubles, payments to those mobilized in all regions (within the framework of partial mobilization, according to the Ministry of Defense, it is planned to call up 300 thousand people.— “b”) will amount to 30 billion rubles. What is this, big money?

The HRC also intends to ask the government to “clearly establish the criteria for mobilization armor” and possibly expand them: for example, to include clergymen and young scientists in the list not subject to mobilization. “We must be provided with clear and understandable criteria for booking, numbers of specialties, a strategic approach (to booking.— “b”), a breakdown by age, the presence of a military specialty, and so on, so as not to return 200-300 people from the draft,” says Mr. Kabanov.

Finally, on the agenda is “the issue of solidarity and mobilization of public consciousness”. This mainly refers to the organization of patriotic holidays to demonstrate solidarity with the military and their families, including during the celebration of the New Year. “Let’s send artists to a new territory (meaning LNR, DNR, Zaporozhye and Kherson region.— “b”), especially since people have not seen holidays there for a long time. Let them go to the front, positive emotions are much more needed there than in Moscow,” says Kirill Kabanov.

The last sentence hardly relates to the human rights competences of the HRC, says political scientist Mikhail Vinogradov, who evaluated the council’s initiatives at the request of Kommersant. According to him, the success of other council proposals directly depends on the “degree of escalation and the scale of mobilization”: if mobilization is expanded, the HRC proposals will not have a chance, as they will create the risk of “governance collapse”. The expert connects the initial lack of competent work of medical boards during mobilization and the lack of clear criteria for postponing it with a lack of experience: “In the last half century, after it became clear that there would be no big war, no one believed that the mobilization system could be seriously launched at all. “.

The HRC proposals will be sent to the government by the end of the week, says Kirill Kabanov. The package will also include other theses that the human rights activists will publish after they are presented to the ministers.

Maria Starikova