In recent days, especially great attention has been focused on the work of the Military Medical Commissions and Territorial Recruiting Centers. The numerous facts of violations revealed by law enforcement officers on the part of the VVK and the TCC in determining fitness for service and accepting bribes from draft dodgers, mass inspections of the work of the TCC, the dismissal and prosecution of their leaders are combined with statements by government officials about checking everyone found unfit and about the possibility of extraditing those who took advantage of their unfitness to travel abroad.
In addition, the Ministry of Defense recently made changes to the schedule of diseases, which expanded the list of diseases in the presence of which a person is considered fully fit for military service.
How does the military medical commission pass and with what diagnoses are those liable for military service declared unfit for service.
Edits to “controversial” articles
In recent days, Order of the Ministry of Defense No. 490 of August 18, 2023 has received wide publicity, which, among other things, expands the list of diseases in the presence of which a person is considered fully fit for military service. Many immediately began to interpret this order as an attempt to mobilize absolutely everyone for war, regardless of their state of health. However, the changes made are not particularly significant and affect not so much whether a person can be drafted or not, but rather whether the person liable for military service will be called up as fully fit or partially fit.
The changes concern 9 articles of the disease schedule, for which in most cases the IHC had the opportunity, at its discretion, to determine whether a person was suitable or partially suitable on an individual basis. We are talking about the following diseases: clinically cured tuberculosis, viral hepatitis with minor dysfunction, asymptomatic carriage of HIV, with immune compensation, anemia that is slowly progressing and non-progressive with minor dysfunction and rare exacerbations, mild short-term painful manifestations of mental disorders, and the like.
Now, according to the new Schedule of Diseases of the Military Military Commission, when examining those liable for military service with such diagnoses, they will be recognized as exclusively fit for military service.
Let us remind you that according to the law, the state has the right to mobilize both fully fit and limited fit. However, those mobilized with limited fitness should not serve in certain branches of the military and in certain positions.
How do IHCs proceed after receiving a summons?
During martial law and general mobilization, all persons liable for military service between the ages of 18 and 60 may be given a summons with which they must appear at the Territorial Recruitment Center (former military registration and enlistment offices). After all the data regarding a person liable for military service has been clarified, he is usually sent to a military medical commission.
All the nuances of passing the military medical examination are spelled out in the order of the Ministry of Defense “On approval of the Regulations on military medical examination in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
Firstly, a candidate for recruitment into the state defense forces must be examined by all basic medical specialists: a surgeon, therapist, neurologist, psychiatrist, ophthalmologist, otolaryngologist, dentist, dermatologist, but if there are indications, they can schedule an examination with doctors of other specialties.
The main task of the Military Military Commission is to determine whether a person liable for military service is capable of performing combat missions and generally serving in the army. And after passing the military medical commission, there may be four options for the doctors’ verdict: fit for military service; temporarily unfit for military service; limited fit for military service; unfit for military service with exclusion from military registration.
Regarding the first point, everything is clear: the person liable for military service is recognized as fit and sent to defend the country. There are no health restrictions. If the Military Military Commission makes a decision that a citizen is unfit for military service and is excluded from military registration, then such a citizen cannot be mobilized and is generally excluded from military registration, which gives him the right to travel abroad.
Those declared temporarily unfit for military service are not mobilized. But they must undergo VVC again in 6 or 12 months. The Military Military Commission makes such a decision in the event of an exacerbation of a particular disease, which in general is not a reason for deregistration from the military register. During the time allotted to him, a person must cure the disease, and after that, in the case of a positive conclusion of the IHC, he will be mobilized into the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The concept of “limitedly fit for military service” is very interesting. Here we are talking about the fact that a person liable for military service still has the opportunity to perform military service, but with certain restrictions in performing certain tasks in the army. For example, such men can be sent to serve in support units, or in the TCC.
What diseases are not mobilized?
In general, during martial law, the general logic of the operation of the Military Military Commission is as follows. All articles devoted to certain diseases (there are 86 in total) have “sub-articles”. In most cases there are three of them – “a”, “b” and “c”. Articles marked with the letter “a” usually provide for a severe progressive course of the disease, significant consequences and functional limitations of the body to which the disease has led. Such patients should be recognized as “unfit for military service and excluded from military registration.” Articles with the letter “b” and “c” define moderate or mild disorders and the course of the disease. And such people are recognized as having limited fitness.
However, there are certain articles for which the IHC had the opportunity to individually determine suitability or limited suitability, or limited suitability or unsuitability. But the order of the Ministry of Defense in the vast majority of cases in wartime obliges the Military Military Commission in such “controversial” cases to make a decision on suitability.
However, this does not mean that there is no human element in determining suitability or that there is no scope for abuse by the IHC. There are no absolute criteria for determining significant or moderate consequences, therefore, the Military Military Commission, for example, may well “harden” the condition of a person liable for military service for money, or “ease it” if it is necessary to carry out the “mobilization plan”.
Ultimately, an analysis of the Schedule of Illnesses shows that to be considered unfit for wartime mobilization, one must have a very serious illness and be in extremely poor health. Most chronic diseases, which in peacetime are considered unfit for service, in wartime are only grounds for being limitedly fit.
Thus, those who have had a cerebral infarction or stroke, which led to significant impairment of function, are considered unsuitable. But a stroke with moderate impairment of function is limited fitness. Also, men with severe forms of atherosclerosis, thrombosis and varicose veins, which significantly impair blood circulation, cannot be mobilized. Moderate circulatory impairment, again, makes a person of limited fitness.
Severe infectious diseases also give rise to exclusion from military registration. We are talking about severe forms of viral hepatitis, as well as HIV, which is accompanied by various parasitic diseases and malignant tumors. In addition, this also includes actively progressing tuberculosis.
Those with severe diseases of the nervous system are not accepted into the army. This applies primarily to people with epilepsy who have frequent epileptic seizures or severe mental disorders. This also includes progressive systemic atrophy with significant dysfunction, cerebral palsy, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, all types of dystonia, but except for vegetative-vascular.
Oddly enough, not all neoplasms in the body of a person liable for military service give him the right to be excluded from military registration. This applies only to those who have primary or secondary tumors in the presence of distant metastases and the impossibility of radical surgical treatment.
Moreover, even the amputation of one limb is not grounds for declaring a person liable for military service unfit. Thus, Article 63-b provides that people with one arm or one leg amputated below the level of the upper third of the leg are of limited fitness in wartime. Guaranteed unfitness – amputation of two limbs. However, in practice, there seem to have been no cases of mobilization of people without an arm or a leg.
Will those who have already been deregistered from the military be re-checked?
Now there is a lot of talk about the fact that almost all verdicts of the Military Military Commission regarding unfitness for service will be carefully checked. They say there is a high probability that the VVK issued a so-called “white ticket” for bribes. And such thoughts are also prompted by the fact that law enforcement officers almost every week are releasing more and more new pieces of information that the regional heads of the TCC have acquired a lot of real estate and various premium cars during the period of a full-scale war.
However, it is still unknown how all this verification of the conclusions of the Military Military Commission regarding citizens unfit for service can take place. And will this happen at all? Firstly, there is no clear legal mechanism for re-examining those found unfit. In addition, it should be understood that a lot of men who, for example, solved the issue of a “slope” from mobilization for a bribe, said that it cost 3-7 thousand dollars, then they had long since gone abroad. Of course, none of them will be going back for a second military medical commission. And from here follows the next myth that is generated by government officials - the extradition of male mobilization evaders.
It all started with the fact that the head of the Servant of the People faction in the Verkhovna Rada, David Arakhamia, said that all men who traveled abroad with the help of fake certificates of unfitness for military service could be extradited back to Ukraine.
However, it is very difficult to extradite anyone from abroad, especially draft dodgers. As Minister of Justice Denis Malyuska notes, foreign countries usually refuse to extradite Ukrainians home, because foreign law enforcement agencies immediately take into account the security situation in Ukraine.
In addition, the presidential representative in the Verkhovna Rada and member of the parliamentary committee on national security and defense Fyodor Venislavsky generally stated that there are no legal procedures for the mass extradition of Ukrainian draft dodgers.
According to him, criminal liability concerns the individual citizen personally and if, for example, it is proven that a person is hiding from a pre-trial investigation or trial abroad, then only after that documents are prepared to a foreign state with a request to extradite this or that citizen of Ukraine. However, Venislavsky himself admitted that a Ukrainian whom our state wants to extradite can sue the court of European countries and it is not a fact that this court will support the position of the state of Ukraine.
In a word, it is now extremely difficult to return draft dodgers to their homeland and Ukrainian law enforcement agencies need, without exaggeration, to use titanic efforts to extradite even one draft dodger. And if we imagine that there are several tens of thousands of such men, then law enforcement officers will be forced to deal exclusively with extradition issues.
