Attrition: Medical Care in the Combat Zone
January 5, 2024: Some things never change in Russia and one item is medical care. Russia never was able to establish a nationwide healthcare system and military health system comparable to those found in the west. This was especially true in the military. Russian medical care in combat units, especially in combat, was never very effective or even available.
In the combat zone there was poor or nonexistent medical treatment for the wounded. It was the same for diseases that of the breakout among troops in the combat zone. Russian troops in Ukraine are currently suffering from what is called mouse fever and receiving little treatment. This means a growing number of Russian troops are technically available for service but are in fact disabled by the mouse fever, which Russian military medical personnel have been slow to deal with. In part that’s because this is a new ailment, and the Russian medical community has not yet found a way to effectively deal with it.
It's a different situation with Ukrainian troops, where the army has been quick to adopt western military practices. The traditional military feldsher (medic with practical but no formal medical training) have received more training and better equipment than their Russian counterparts. The results have been dramatic.
About 40 percent of Russian casualties die compared to only 20 percent of Ukrainian casualties because the Russians in this war often get no battlefield medical treatment whatsoever. The Ukrainians eagerly adopted western combat medical practices, which were above average during World War Two and continued to improve after that war. Subsequently western forces have at least minimal battle treatment, largely by getting the wounded off the battlefield to be treated by medics and eventually sent to field hospitals where surgery and other emergency treatment was available. It has long been known that wounded soldiers in freezing conditions died of exposure or shock within about an hour unless they are carried to shelter, but that is not happening for Russian soldiers in this war at all even though it was done somewhat during World War Two. Soviet field medics then were generally women with no medical training whose major job was to crawl out into battlefields with groundsheets, roll wounded soldiers onto those, and then drag them back to an aid station. There are no such Russian female medics in this war so wounded who cannot themselves crawl to a rear aid station generally die. Prospective recruits know this and that’s another reason for avoiding military service.
https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htatrit/articles/20240105.aspx
