Matvey Kharitonov, a conscript from Tula, died after a month in compulsory military service. This happened in military unit #76736 in the Naro-Fominsk district. His father Vyacheslav Kharitonov says that his son had pneumonia on New Year's Eve, but because of the holidays, the hospital didn’t accept him. When he was later placed in the intensive care his condition was already critical. Kharitonov senior informed "7x7" about his son’s death on February 6.
Matvey Kharitonov from the Tula region was drafted into the army on December 22, after he failed the winter exams in college. His father Vyacheslav Kharitonov believes that the military enlistment offices are instructed to conscript failed students immediately. The young man was sent to military unit #76736 in the Naro-Fominsk district of the Moscow region. According to his father, his son was completely healthy at the time.
On January 18, Matvey Kharitonov died. Before that, presumably, he had been in the medical center with bilateral pneumonia for 11 days. The doctors allegedly ignored the young man's high temperature. His father thinks that his son had not been hospitalized in time and properly diagnosed because of the New Year holidays.
Kharitonov was eventually placed in the Naro-Fominsk regional hospital, already in a very serious condition. Doctors had to transfer him to the intensive care unit of a military hospital in Podolsk where he began hemorrhaging internally. His father was told about it by the doctor, who performed a blood transfusion. After a month in the army, Matvey Kharitonov’s body was delivered to his home town Shchyokino in the Tula region.
His father says that has heard rumors about the cruel treatment of recruits at military unit #76736. They might be kept outside in the freezing cold for five hours and forced to wash with ice water. Vyacheslav Kharitonov has complained to the Moscow Military Investigation Committee about his son's death. In Kharitonov's opinion, the military enlistment office might conceal materials related to his son's death. He claims that he will "go all the way to the Commander-in-Chief" to find out all circumstances of the tragedy.
Incidents with conscripts dying while on compulsory military service are not unusual in Russia. In May 2022, Daniil Radsky died in Volgograd. He allegedly committed suicide, and a razor blade was found next to his body. Radsky had 57 days left to serve. The parents of the young man don’t believe the military's explanation of suicide.
In Voronezh, captain Dmitry Prokhorov received four years of a suspended sentence after an incident resulting in his subordinate’s death. In February 2019, he physically assaulted soldier Stepan Tsymbal, whom he suspected of stealing two cases of vodka from his car. Tsymbal was later found dead.
