Official admits a lack of military doctors

MOSCOW — One of Russia’s most prominent nationalist politicians said the Russian military does not have an adequate number of doctors among other problems, a message he delivered in a meeting Saturday with the mothers of soldiers mobilized for the fight in Ukraine.

The comments by Leonid Slutsky, leader of the populist Liberal Democratic Party and chairman of the foreign relations committee in the lower house of parliament, was an unusually public admission of problems within the military as Russian forces suffer a series of battlefield setbacks.

“There are not enough doctors in the military units; everyone says this. I cannot say they do not exist at all, but they are practically not seen there,” Slutsky said at the meeting in St. Petersburg.