A Russian health oversight inspection of the Republican Children's Clinical Hospital in occupied Crimea revealed a critical shortage of basic life-support equipment for newborns, the Center for National Resistance (CNS) reported.
The hospital lacks breathing bags, cardiac monitors, and other devices considered the bare minimum in functioning medical facilities.
The equipment deficit accumulated over several years alongside rising infant mortality in Crimea, which increased by another 9% in the past year alone, according to CNS data. The main children's hospital should have prevented such trends, analysts noted.
The situation is particularly acute in the neonatal intensive care unit. Medical staff must rotate between several resuscitation posts using a single cardiac monitor for multiple patients, while some breathing bags are in unusable condition, CNS sources report. Doctors cannot always perform necessary resuscitation procedures quickly enough to stabilize infants with severe respiratory complications.
Staff repeatedly informed hospital management about the equipment shortage but received formal dismissals or suggestions to wait for the next budget cycle, CNS reported. Inside the team, there is "a sense of abandonment and fear that any shift change could prove fatal for young patients."
CNS analysts say the situation reflects deep degradation of medical infrastructure under occupation authorities. In practice, Crimean healthcare has simulated modernization for years while funds went not to children's hospitals but to the mobilization economy. Medical facilities remain chronically underfunded, specialists are leaving, and equipment is wearing out.
Following the high-profile inspection, occupation authorities publicly limited their response to minor fines and promises to "fix the problems."
Such a reaction indicates an attempt to conceal the true scale of the problem, CNS emphasized: infant mortality is rising not due to individual staff errors or isolated failures, but due to "a deep systemic failure in the medical sector that occupation authorities prefer not to acknowledge."
The hospital crisis comes as Russia faces a broader medical staffing shortage. After Vladimir Putin signed a law requiring medical students to complete three years of mandatory service, a wave of university dropouts began, with senior students leaving rather than work in depressed or frontline regions, CNS previously reported.
Occupied territories already face a deficit of pediatricians and specialized children's doctors. Some hospitals have switched to reduced schedules, while routine checkups are redirected to overcrowded clinics, leaving children without proper diagnostics and specialist consultations.
Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 following a military operation and staged referendum that the international community condemned as illegitimate. The annexation violated international law and Ukrainian sovereignty. More than a decade later, the peninsula remains under Russian occupation, with its population subject to Russian administration, conscription, and public services.
