POTIYIVKA, Ukraine — In the third year of Russia’s war against Ukraine, social benefits for war veterans are often distributed based on one’s connections, not battlefield past.
Ruslan Dubitsky has been trying to register as a disabled war veteran for more than two years.
Back in September 2014, he was wounded by mortar fire when serving near the town of Novosvitlivka in Luhansk Oblast as a member of the Aidar volunteer battalion, one of the unofficial military units that fought alongside the Ukrainian army in the first months of the Russian-instigated war in eastern Ukraine.
Under shellfire, Dubitsky, now 39, was evacuated by helicopter to a military hospital in Kharkiv, where doctors removed two large pieces of shrapnel from his back and diagnosed serious concussion.
He was sent to recuperate first in Lviv, and then Kyiv, before he ended up in Potiyivka in Zhytomyr Oblast. But his wounds refused to heal, and his psychological trauma worsened. After his wife left him, Dubitsky, a former welder, ended up in a mental clinic with alcohol problems.
Ruslan Dubitsky shows the documents from the hospital which describe his wounds. (Anastasia Vlasova)
To add to his despair, Dubitsky’s legal status has been his trouble for over two years. Having got a serious spine injury on battlefield, he is entitled to a status of a disabled war veteran, which gives rather large privileges and state aid.
In July 2016, Dubitsky finally received the status of combat participant, which gives some privileges. But the coveted status of a disabled war veteran is still out of his reach due to a bureaucratic loop: The only place where he can get the last document on his list, a military hospital, won’t issue it because Dubitsky isn’t with military currently.
But the procedure wasn’t this tangled for all former fighters.
Anatoliy Naumenko, a police general, had it much easier.
At the beginning of the conflict in the Donbas, Naumenko, now 46, was declared the “people’s police head” by separatists in Luhansk at a rally next to the Luhansk Oblast police headquarters on April 29, 2014.
Naumenko later said he hadn’t known about the separatists declaring him their police chief and never cooperated with them.
In late May, Naumenko moved to government-controlled Svatovo in Luhansk Oblast, leaving behind dozens of police officers under his command, who were stormed, disarmed and humiliated by the separatist crowd at Luhansk police headquarters.
In March 2015, Naumenko applied for the status of combat participant, but received a refusal from the interdepartmental commission after he failed to show where he had fought.
But soon after that, Andriy Mamalyga, one of the commission’s members, said he had met with Naumenko in Luhansk Oblast, and discovered that Naumenko received the combat participant status after all – from a special police commission.
More than 290,000 soldiers have already received the status of combat participants, the state service on veterans reported in March. It is issued not only to actual fighters, but also to all the law enforcers – including prosecutors, State Security Service officers and police – who served in the areas near the front line.
Mamalyga believes that at least one-third of the ones who received the status and the privileges it entails didn’t in fact deserve it. Mamalyga said that about 26 prosecutors from Donetsk Oblast had received the status of combat participants early in 2015.
“Officials get all the papers in good time and get all the required stamps on them, while regular soldiers often suffer because of the negligence of their commanders,” said Mamalyga, a lawyer and a war veteran himself.
Hellish paperwork
This is exactly what happened to Dubitsky.
Sergiy Melnychuk, Aidar’s former commander and now a lawmaker, said he didn’t remember Dubitsky being in his unit. Dubitsky’s name was also missing from the Aidar battalion’s rolls.
However, Dubitsky’s new life partner Halyna Krasikova, whom he met during the rehabilitation, managed to find his name on a list of Ukrainian soldiers posted on a separatists’ website, along with names of the soldiers who fought alongside with Dubitsky. They eventually were able to confirm that Dubitsky was their comrade.
But it was hard to get officials to accept this testimony.
Halyna Krasikova, Ruslan Dubitsky’s new life partner, in the yard of her house in Potiyivka in Zhytomyr Oblast. (Anastasia Vlasova)
Krasikova recalls she had to threaten to take the Military Registration and Enlistment Office in Starobilsk in Luhansk Oblast to court to make them check their registry and prove that Dubitsky had had a medical examination there before being sent to the front line.
The couple had to make a dozen trips to Kyiv and Andrushivka, the town in Zhytomyr Oblast where Dubitsky is registered, to do all the paperwork.
Krasikova said that eventually they decided to give up and went to a medical commission to get a pension for Dubitsky as a disabled civilian – a much easier-to-get status that brings fewer privileges.
“But the doctors told us not to be stupid – he was wounded at war and deserves the status of a wounded war veteran,” Krasikova said.
But in early March, after two official investigations by Defense Ministry and State Security Service confirmed he had fought and was wounded in the Donbas, Dubitsky, who still has a piece of shrapnel in his body, was told he still didn’t qualify for a war-related disability pension.
A local commission required one more medical examination at a military hospital, while the hospital refused to perform it because Dubitsky was no longer in the military.
Dubitsky has complained to the Ministry of Social Policy, which oversees the payment of social benefits to the fighters of volunteer battalions, and is waiting for the response.
Fake fighters
Meanwhile, police general Naumenko left his post in October 2015 after then-governor of Donetsk Oblast George Tuka accused him of corruption and covering for smuggling in the region.
But his life isn’t too shabby now, thanks to the war veteran status that he received while in office. He benefits from a set of privileges that includes an increased pension, a 75-percent discount on home utilities, priority rights to privatize land, and immunity from lustration.
Naumenko couldn’t be reached for comment for this story. The Interior Ministry didn’t reply to a request asking why Naumenko had been granted the status of combat participant by the time this story went to print.
But Naumenko’s case is just the tip of the iceberg, activists say.
Roman Sinitsyn, a volunteer who has been helping the Ukrainian army and participating in one of the police vetting commissions as a part of the police reform, remembers that out of some 800 police officers that his commission vetted for the newly-formed national police, about 70 percent had the status of combat participants.
Sinitsyn said that in 2015 and 2016 it became popular for police officers to organize work tours to Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and other Donbas cities safely away from the front line, where they would serve for one month – the minimum period required to obtain the status of a combat participant.
“They already call them ‘veterans of the Kramatorsk encirclement,’” Sinitsyn joked grimly, comparing the bloody battles during the encirclements of Ilovaisk and Debaltseve to the peaceful city of Kramatorsk, where most of the police officers had gone on their one-month tours. He claimed that the scheme had become so popular that the police officers started paying bribes to be sent there.
In 2014, when there was no time limitation for gaining the status of combat participant, many law enforcement officials got the status after spending just a few days in the war zone.
For instance, 52 military and civilian prosecutors, including Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoliy Matios, could apply for this status after attending a two-day seminar in Kramatorsk in October 2014.
Vasyl Pisny, the deputy head of the anti-corruption department of the SBU, received the status of combat participant after spending three days in the war zone in July-August 2014.
Vasyl Nevolia, the head of Ukraine’s bureau of Interpol, who traveled to the war zone for four days in autumn 2014, managed to receive both a status of combat participant and to keep his job, avoiding lustration.
Lots of officials of the former regime have avoided lustration in the same way, said Oleksandra Drik, the head of Ukraine’s civilian lustration committee.
Drik showed the Kyiv Post a list of 42 officials from the police, SBU, military and even from the state anti-money-laundering service, who had avoided lustration because of their status as combat participants.
Forgotten veterans
Meanwhile, several thousand fighters from the volunteer battalions can’t obtain their rightful veteran status, said Volodymyr Pryimachenko, the head of the Kyiv department at the State Service for War Veterans.
Pryimachenko said the veterans of Right Sector and OUN battalions, which fought in the hottest spots of the war, including Pisky and Donetsk airport, now face the biggest problems, since these battalions were never officially registered.
Pryimachenko, who fought in Aidar himself, is now helping with the paperwork of Dubitsky and other forgotten fighters. He said the wounded have lots of problems, because spending months in hospital meant they didn’t have time to submit the necessary papers.
But all law enforcement officers who spent some time in a war zone – no matter how close they were to the front – still have the right to apply for the status of combat participant.
Dubitsky gets mad when he hears how easily officials obtain a status that has taken him years to receive.
“They should be stripped of the combat status,” he said. “What kind of fighters are they if they just stepped on the front line with one foot!”
Ruslan Dubitsky shows his radiographs with the wounds. (Anastasia Vlasova)
The war still haunts Dubitsky. Sometimes he sleepwalks, looking for the separatists in his yard. Other times he thinks he sees separatist snipers in the bushes across the road.
He tries to help Krasikova with gardening and housework, but tires quickly. His back aches especially painfully when there is a change in the weather.
In December, Dubitsky received Hr 10,000 (about $370) from the state for treatment. All the other treatment and medicines he has received over the last two years was paid for by private volunteers, Krasikova said.
She’s grateful to the doctors, whom she said always treated Dubitsky with respect, and as a priority patient.
“The fighters who volunteered to the war didn’t think that they would have to prove it later,” Krasikova said. “They went to fight for their country, not for a status.”
