Russian state-owned media agencies TASS, RIA Novosti, and Vesti, along with other Kremlin mouthpieces, are disseminating a video initially published by the Russian Ministry of Defense. The RIA Novosti piece, titled “They take the armless and the legless’: a POW on mobilization in Ukraine,” reads:
“Captured serviceman Yuriy Marsiuk said that the AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine] takes disabled people without legs, without arms. The Russian Ministry of Defense has released footage confirming this fact.
“Due to understaffing and a colossal shortage of manpower, some formations have to make do almost exclusively with disabled personnel: ‘They take even those who are missing a leg or an arm,’ he shared. According to the POW, all maimed fighters and conscripts with disabilities are assigned to the 30th and 31st AFU brigades.”
This piece of news is difficult to take seriously: just try to imagine a military unit consisting of armless and legless soldiers, especially on the sections of the front where the aforementioned brigades are operating. The 30th Brigade is fighting in the Bakhmut sector, and the 31st is in the Pokrovsk sector.
Rumors about the mobilization of disabled persons may have arisen after the Ukrainian authorities decided to revise their system for classifying the severity of various disabilities. However, disabled persons who are missing a limb, hand or foot, or any of the paired organs are not eligible for recertification in the armed forces.
Had there been at least a single case of mobilization of a disabled person contrary to the current laws, it would surely have been mentioned in Ukrainian-language cyberspace. But nothing like that can be found.
There appears to have been only one case when a person with serious illnesses was mobilized, and the resulting tragedy caused public outrage. In August 2023, in Odesa Region, Ukrainian military authorities mobilized Borys Hlushak, who suffered from epilepsy and mental retardation. On his first day of service, he died from an epileptic seizure. He had not been certified as disabled but was in outpatient psychiatric care.
Many Ukrainian media wrote about the death of the seriously ill mobilized man. Criminal proceedings were initiated to investigate his illegal mobilization. In February 2024, human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets took the investigation under his personal oversight. The case has not yet been brought to trial.