The Vladimir Garrison Military Court upheld the claim of Russian Guard employee Kirill Nesterov, to whom the command refused to pay compensation for being wounded in the first days of the invasion of Ukraine. The corresponding decision was published on the court’s website, and the Dovod publication drew attention to it.
According to court materials, on February 24, 2022, Nesterov, as a member of the Nevsky OMON detachment, as a rifleman, went to Ukraine, and on March 3, a convoy of cars, one of which contained a National Guard member, came under fire. As a result of a shot from a grenade launcher and an explosion, Nesterov “was exposed to a blast wave and was injured,” the court decision says. We are probably talking about the shelling near Kharkov, in which four officers of the Vladimir department of the Russian Guard were killed.
He filed a complaint about his state of health on March 10, but medical assistance “due to the large number of wounded” was provided to him only at the point of permanent deployment in Vladimir.
From March 22 to April 8, the security officer was treated in the neurological department of the hospital, where Nesterov was diagnosed with a closed craniocerebral injury with a concussion, which caused “slight harm to his health.”
“We wandered through the fields for several days.” In the first days of the invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of Russian Guard members refused to fight and returned — and are now appealing their dismissal in court
After his discharge, Nesterov turned to the head of the regional department of the Russian Guard with a request to pay him compensation for his injury. The National Guard member was denied payment, citing the fact that “the circumstances of his injury have not been documented.” As a result, the National Guard asked the court to declare the authorities’ conclusion illegal and cancel it.
“Based on the analysis of Nesterov’s explanations, we can conclude that he was also injured not as a result of a combat defeat by the enemy, but through personal negligence, due to his violation of safety requirements. There is no written evidence of Nesterov being injured on the territory of the Northern Military District. The plaintiff proves these circumstances solely through the testimony of his colleagues, who also went to court to challenge a similar conclusion,” the defendant’s defense argued.
As a result, the court declared Nesterov’s refusal illegal and ordered the head of the Russian Guard department for the Vladimir region to re-organize an inspection into the fact that the security officer had received an injury. According to data from the court’s website, after satisfying the complaint, Nesterov abandoned another claim against the commander of military unit No. 11046, who did not refer him to a military medical commission.
In May of this year, the Vladimir Garrison Military Court refused compensation to three soldiers of the Russian Guard, who claimed that they were injured when they came under fire in Ukraine on March 3 as part of the Nevsky battalion. Ivan Tezikov, Vadim Nosov and Vagif Vidadi-ogly Abdullaev appealed to the court. As the latter’s lawyer Andrei Maslov pointed out, there were six such plaintiffs in total — in addition to Kirill Nesterov, these are, presumably, Ivan Zamaraev and Kambolat Khamatkoev. Initially, in early April, all three were also denied their claims.
Then one of the decisions stated that during the shelling, due to injuries, the plaintiffs “experienced a severe headache, heaviness in the head, pain in the neck and lumbar spine, blurred vision, poor sleep, dizziness,” and upon returning to Vladimir in March, they underwent treatment.
The document mentioned that the commander of the 1st operational platoon named Popov conducted an inspection, as a result of which it was decided that the soldiers were injured during a clash in Ukraine, but subsequently the conclusions of these inspections were canceled. It was clarified that the presidential decree on payments for injuries in war was issued on March 5, 2022 and does not apply to events that occurred before that.