Hearses are piling up in front of Russian cemeteries. Doctors, meanwhile, have to travel abroad for further training.
It sounds paradoxical, but after 13 months of war with allegedly hundreds of thousands of dead, there is apparently a lack of human corpses in Russia: Doctors now have to travel to neighboring countries to practice on the bodies of the deceased, reports the independent Russian portal “Baza” on Telegram. The background is the sanctions imposed on Russia after the attack on Ukraine.
“In Russia, it’s not easy legally to donate your body to science, so local corpses were usually in short supply,” Baza explains. “Before the military special operation (as Russian media have to call the war, Anm. d. Red.) the shortage was remedied with the help of the US, which is supplying bodies to many countries, including Russia. However, after February 24, 2022, deliveries to our country were stopped.” Now, Russian buyers would find few corpses on the open market because many countries have strict rules on dealing with the deceased, according to “Baza”.
“Young Men, Died for Nothing”
Alexey Ivanov, the head of a private anatomy laboratory, told the portal that he hadn’t found any new suppliers of cadavers in a year. He also knows of lecturers who have now run out of teaching material. While medical students can work on cadavers in formaldehyde, practicing doctors now have to travel to Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and Azerbaijan for further training, Ivanov reports.
Meanwhile, hearses are apparently queuing in front of Russian cemeteries, as this video from Vladivostok on Russia’s east coast, which was shared on Twitter, is said to show:
In December there was not a single grave at the site, the man explains in the video. Now new graves would be springing up everywhere and new bodies would be brought in all the time: “Young men who died for nothing. Horror. Horror.”
