Ukraine’s top general has ordered a crackdown on medical boards that may approve sick soldiers for the draft. Commander-in-Chief Mykhailo Drapatyi signed the order on 28 October, and Dmytro Lykhovii, a representative of the Armed Forces’ Main Directorate of Communications, confirmed it to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

The order tightens control over the military medical commissions at Ukraine’s recruitment centers, the bodies whose rulings decide whether a man is sent to the army or sent home. It matters because the quality of those rulings has become a recurring grievance.

A closer look at every ruling, and special attention to the suspicious ones

Lykhovii said the order is meant to raise the quality of medical examinations, stop the call-up of people who cannot serve on health grounds, and shut down corruption in the mobilization process.

“The order was signed to improve the quality of medical examinations of those liable for service, to make it impossible to draft citizens who cannot serve for reasons of health, and to prevent any manifestations of corruption during mobilization measures,” he told Suspilne.

The commissions’ decisions will now face close monitoring to establish whether they are justified, he said, with particular scrutiny of cases where a person was first ruled fit and later found unfit over illnesses unrelated to service, and of people with chronic conditions that could flare up in the first months of duty.

Heads and members of the commissions will be put through regular training courses, including on current standards of diagnosis.

Why commanders keep being sent soldiers who cannot fight

The order also tightens oversight of how recruitment-center officials refer people for examinations, handle their documents, and enter data into the state register of conscripts, people liable for service and reservists. The gap it targets is already well documented.

“I would single out the passing of the medical commission at the mobilization stage, which then creates extra problems for commanders... we later see these problems in the army: they mobilize people who, by their objective state of health, are unfit, but are legally considered healthy,” Ruslan Tsygankov, the first deputy military ombudsman, said.

Lykhovii said the document was signed on 28 October and that there is no further detail yet on how it will be carried out.