Putin's Niece "framed" Her Uncle
- 4.09.2025, 11:50
Claimed Russia's emergence as a "world leader" in prosthetics thanks to the war.
Russia has broken into the world leaders in prosthetic limbs thanks to the war in Ukraine, Deputy Defense Minister Anna Tsivileva announced. "Participants of the special military operation, our veterans, have become the drivers through which the state began to very actively introduce world experience and developments. It is no secret that 11.5 million disabled people who lived with us before the SWO had no opportunity to receive the necessary rehabilitation," Tsivileva said at a panel session of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF).
She said that earlier the state's involvement in prosthetic limbs ended with the issuance of an artificial body part to a person, and long queues lined up to receive prosthetic limbs. Now, however, authorities have introduced a comprehensive approach because they have encountered that war veterans, after receiving prosthetics, "carry those arms and legs and don't understand how they function." "The cycle includes competent preparation, prosthetics and training on how to use the prosthesis. And not just to use, but to maximize the lost function," Tsivileva emphasized. At the moment, according to her, prosthetics in Russia for the first time is not inferior to China. She also added that "this is a huge investment and money."
Tsivileva is a great-niece of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the wife of Energy Minister Sergey Tsivileva. Putin appointed her deputy defense minister in June 2024. The Defense Ministry said at the time that Tsivileva would be in charge of social and housing provision for the military to bring it to a "new qualitative level." The official is on the US and EU sanctions lists.
At the end of 2024, 376,000 Russians were seriously wounded and disabled at the front, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) estimated. Among the seriously wounded, one in two faced amputation, a senior Russian official familiar with the statistics told the New York Times. Thus, based on IISS calculations, the number of disabled amputees among those who returned from the front may exceed 180,000.
The government had previously budgeted to finance prosthetic limbs for 60,000-70,000 disabled amputees annually - twice as many as before the war, when the need was estimated at 27,000 per year. However, the allocated money is not enough, and military men returning from the front wait for months for prostheses, doctors at one of the largest rehabilitation centers for amputees "Voronovskoye" told "Verstka".
According to one of the doctors, many "veterans" spent 4-5 months or even more in the institution, waiting for prosthetics. At the same time, according to the regulations, several weeks are allocated for prosthetics, but there are no available products for this purpose.