Want an MRI? Go to Russia. How residents in temporarily-occupied Luhansk cope with the invader’s obstructions to healthcare

Ukrainian article of the week published in the 67th edition of the "What about Ukraine" newsletter on March 6th, 2025. The article was written by by Kseniia Novytska for LB.ua and was translated for n-ost by Tetiana Evloeva. Find the original article in Ukrainian here.

Photo credit: EPA/UPG

In the areas of the Luhansk region occupied after 24 February 2022, locals say the Russians have converted the major hospitals into military healthcare centres primarily serving the Russian military personnel and the local militia.

They claim citizens have no access to their appointments for planned surgeries, and have almost no medical treatment whatsoever. Sometimes they can access emergency care, but only in truly life-threatening situations.

Lack of specialists in Luhansk region

According to the locals, most of the region — including the cities of Siverodonetsk, Lysychansk, Rubizhne and Kreminna — has no medical services whatsoever. Before the full-scale invasion, all the major medical institutions of the region, such as hospitals and an oncology clinic with new equipment, were located in these cities. Today, the local residents are forced to seek medical care in Starobilsk or Luhansk — although Starobilsk is experiencing a lack of specialist doctors.

One in every ten posts on the local Telegram channels shows someone seeking a medical professional. Most often, people seek orthopedists, pediatric dermatologists, surgeons, ophthalmologists and endocrinologists.

A deficit in specialists is obvious when you look at the list of the visiting hours of resident doctors of the medical centre of Starobilsk as of February 2025, which show huge restrictions.

In Starobilsk, there’s a private medical clinic, called Hippocrates, which charges for medical services. The mandatory health insurance policy in the temporarily occupied territories does not cover private clinics.

“I don’t know if I’ll still be alive on the date of my MRI appointment”

There are services that residents cannot access immediately, even if they pay, such as MRI and CT scans. Before the full-scale invasion, finding a slot for such an examination wasn’t a problem. The Starobilsk Medical Centre, in its namesake city, had a new MRI machine, and Siverodonetsk had private clinics specialising in MRI and CT scans.

However, the occupying authorities failed to allow the resumption of CT scans. The locals believe the reason is that the specialists brought in by Russia lack the necessary training and knowledge of how to operate that hi-end equipment. Also, there is an overall shortage of specialists in that field.

In order to have an MRI and CT scan, residents have to travel to Rossosh, a town in Russia, located 140km from Starobilsk and 200km from Siverodonetsk.

For instance, a local resident named Natalia booked her MRI scan in Rossosh in late 2024. The clinic only accepted patients by appointment, and lacked some medical specialists. She had to pay in Russian rubles, with the price range between 2,900—12,000 rubles [~32 — 130 euros] for an MRI scan, and 2,500 — 9,100 rubles [~27 - 98 euros] for a CT scan.

“We have quite a few questions about MRIs,” reads a post from a woman called Yulia in one local chat groups. “Like, why is there none offered in Starobilsk, the regional capital?… Is there anyone from the local government reading this?”

“Our Medical Centre lacks doctors, yet you somehow expect an MRI?” comments another local, Olena.

Nurse: sometimes Russian replacement doctors “do not arrive”

We talk to a nurse working at one of the medical facilities in occupied Luhansk. We won’t disclose her name or place of employment to ensure her safety. She says that in Luhansk: “We’ve been having more work recently, as the number of patients has increased tenfold. We treat everyone: locals, refugees and military personnel. We experience some lack of medication — especially painkillers, neurological and cardiovascular meds — due to problems in the supply chain. However, they promised to fix that.” She adds that there is a lack of doctors: “The [occupiers] bring doctors over from Russia, to work here in shifts. They spend two weeks here, then leave, to be replaced by others. Sometimes the replacements never come. Whenever a patient needs urgent treatment, especially an oncology patient, they always have the option of traveling to Russia.”

Before the full-scale invasion, cancer patients from all over the region were treated at the so-called Luhansk Regional Clinical Oncology Dispensary in Kreminna. Now those who stayed in the temporarily occupied areas have to travel to the city of Luhansk. However, the locals complain about the quality of the treatment.

“My dad has cancer,” shares Halyna (an alias). “He can’t get any treatment in the city of Svatove, as they turned the local medical facility into a military-only hospital. We went to the city of Starobilsk, where we were redirected to the city of Luhansk. When we arrived there, he was refused any medical treatment because he only had a Ukrainian passport. I had to pull some strings to secure him an appointment. He needed an MRI scan, however. The nearest opening was available in six months’ time. In those couple of days he had spent at the hospitals, he was told that only a few ‘chosen ones’ can get their chemotherapy in Luhansk, while the rest are redirected to ‘the great land’ of Russia. He told me he was done waiting for any mercy from these people, and went home to die.”

Free Ukraine sends cheaper meds to occupied zones

While pharmacies in the temporarily occupied territories do sell medication, they are not always accessible. Oksana (an alias) operates as a contact between people willing to send medication from the Ukrainian government-controlled territories and those needing them in the temporarily occupied territories. “Every day, I process dozens of messages from former residents of the Luhansk region who fled the temporarily occupied territory, enquiring about the way to send medications to their relatives who chose to stay,” she says. “Most often, people seek ways to send their packages to Siverodonetsk, Rubizhne, Lysychansk and Kreminna. Other requested destinations include Luhansk — not to mention Bilovodsk, Novopskov, Starobilsk and Svatove. People send literally everything: cardiovascular drugs, anti-migraine, antihistamine, and anti-inflammatory meds, remedies for women’s health and gout. Just to give you some idea: the difference in prices for gout meds is something that shook me to the core. In Ukraine, I can buy them for 700–800 hryvnia [~ 16–19 euros], while in the occupied area, they are 6,800 rubles [~47 euros]. Can you imagine the difference?”

According to Oksana, people ask her to send even the most basic things like paracetamol, ibuprofen and valerian root, because the locals complain about the quality of what is available. “Whenever I try to explain that those things can be bought at local pharmacies, people just complain that those remedies don’t provide any relief whatsoever. End of story,” adds Oksana.

Disabled forced to make journey to Russia for “reassessment”

Everything the Russians and their local administration take over ends in a failure to gain the loyalty of the local population. This year, the occupying administration is forcing every person with a disability to apply for a reassessment. This has to take place in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, 300 km from the city of Luhansk. Without this reassessment, the disabled persons can no longer receive social security payments.

“People won’t go to Rostov, as it costs a lot of money to get there,” says Anatoliy, a resident of Svatove who returned from his occupied hometown in January 2025, “and some are physically incapable of making that journey.”

Russia’s intention behind the ‘reform’ appears to be to reduce the number of disabled people from the social security system, in order to save money.