The fates of ex-Ministers of Health in Crimea and Sevastopol are adventure stories with shooting, dungeons and finding treasures. The fact that medicine here is not of the highest level is suspected not only by patients, but also by local authorities. For nine years, the head of the Russian Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, appointed experienced and reliable people to this position seven times, as he thought.

First

In the first government after the annexation of the peninsula to Russia, since February 2014, Petr Mikhalchevsky was the Minister of Health. He was fired from his post due to numerous violations (in particular, the collection by hospitals of fees for treatment under the guise of charitable contributions and the actual embezzlement of humanitarian aid received in the region). After his resignation, Mikhalchevsky moved to Kyiv. In that political situation, even for a native of the Kherson region, this was an illogical act: in 2018, the ex-official was detained and accused of encroaching on the territorial integrity of Ukraine and treason. During a search at his home, they found a Russian passport and a ministerial certificate.

While awaiting trial, Petr Mikhalchevsky spent a year and a half in a pre-trial detention center, then was under house arrest. In July 2020, the Dnipro District Court of Kyiv found Petr Mikhalchevsky guilty of treason and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. After that, he disappeared from the information field. Alexander Bakharev became the new Minister of Health of the Crimea. Six months later, he voluntarily returned to the Kerch hospital.

In September 2015, in Simferopol, an armed man shot the doctors of an ambulance substation. The main motive for the murder was called personal hostility. The offender believed that the doctors provide him with insufficient medical care. Minister of Health Alexander Mogilevsky, who worked for less than a year, wrote a letter of resignation. This May, Mogilevsky died at the age of 73.

waiting list

Alexander Golenko worked as a minister for a long time: from the end of 2015 to July 2019, and resigned for health reasons. In 2016, the minister declared 2.736 million rubles of salary, he and his wife then had a land plot of 1,000 square meters, a house of 115.4 square meters and two apartments with a footage of 54.8 and 61.6 square meters. The Minister of Health did not have a car, but the wife owned a Lincoln navigator.

For comparison: Sergei Aksenov earned a little more than 2.6 million rubles in 2016, and the head of the Council of Ministers – only 1.4 million rubles.

Igor Chemodanov became the Minister of Medicine, he got a pandemic. According to the head of the Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, he was fired due to “a large number of complaints in connection with refusals to hospitalize patients, which is purely a shortcoming of officials.”

The ministerial career ended with an internal investigation due to the death of two people who were sick with pneumonia, and whom the doctors refused to hospitalize. But, having returned to the Blood Center, he famously continued to spend budget money on dubious projects there.

Alexander Ostapenko became the sixth Minister of Health in the new Russian history of Crimea. He took up this post on October 2, 2020 and did not last a year in the ministerial chair. In September 2021, Konstantin Skorupsky, Chief Physician of the Sudak City Hospital, took over the leadership position. A month ago, Aksyonov reprimanded him for not personally bypassing “controlled territory” and not knowing “gray zones.”

In addition, Sergei Aksyonov initiated an internal audit against Skorupsky for failing to meet deadlines for the implementation of national projects. He did not understand the charges.

Sevastopol

The difficult situation is in the medical facilities of neighboring Sevastopol. Yuri Voskanyan, former head of the Sevastopol health department, left his post in September 2016. Until that moment, serious complaints had arisen from the townspeople who had collected signatures under a petition demanding his resignation. In 2015, the Department of Health entered into a contract with a contractor for the supply and commissioning of a magnetic resonance tomograph on obviously unenforceable conditions. They sorted it out for a long time, but brought the case to court, estimating the damage at 3 million rubles. Voskanyan is being tried only now – for abuse of power. He faces up to 10 years in prison.

In 2018-2020, the Sevastopol Department of Health was headed by Sergey Shekhovtsov. He resigned after his subordinates Vladislav Nusinov and Oleg Romensky were fired in October 2020 as a result of an audit. The media mentioned that they were involved in a corruption scandal, but the details of this story are unknown.

Kherson

It now appears that traits characteristic of medical officials are spread like an infection by coughing or sneezing. The neighboring Kherson region was subjected to the same infection. In mid-April of this year, the United States imposed new sanctions against dozens of individuals and entities. Natives and citizens of Uzbekistan also appeared on this sanctions list.

Vadim Ilmiev was born in Samarkand and graduated from the Tashkent Higher Combined Arms Command School. In the 1990s, he ended up in Ukraine, apparently received citizenship and became involved in active political activity. In 2017, in the Kherson region, he was in the leadership of the Ukrainian Choice – People’s Right movement, led by Viktor Medvedchuk. As deputy chairman of the territorial council of this movement in the Kherson region, in 2020 he ran for the Kherson city council from the Vladimir Saldo Bloc party, but lost the election.

In May 2022, the Ukrainian media reported that the Kherson military administration announced the appointment of a new head of the regional health department, Vadim Ilmiyev, a resident of Kherson. Soon the Russian media called him “Minister of Health of the Kherson region.”

As a Russian official, he confidently reported: “Already about 70% of medical institutions have been re-registered, settlement accounts have been registered. We have already started paying wages in rubles for two weeks. Also, employees of medical institutions receive a one-time allowance in the amount of 10 thousand rubles, in addition to wages … We have indexed. And it turned out to be 35-40% more than medical workers received before, that is, very significantly. And that’s just for the transitional period.”

Vadim Ilmiev wrote to the Kherson telegram news channel: “We are proud of our employees. They always demonstrate their professionalism: they save human lives and replenish the personnel reserve of our region. Only forward, only to victory!

But the investigating authorities found other stories in the pay slips. According to investigators, from September 1, 2022 to April 14, 2023, Vadim Ilmiev, using his official position, stole funds in the amount of more than 26.5 million rubles belonging to the Ministry of Health of the Kherson region, intended to pay salaries to employees of the Kherson City Clinical Hospital.

He probably used this money stolen from his colleagues to build a good house in the Crimea. There, during a search of the ex-official, large sums of money, works of art and jewelry were found.

Ilmiyev was chosen as a measure of restraint in the form of detention.