stories
Patients at a public hospital in Surgut, Russia, say doctors performed abortions and other gynecological surgeries on them without anesthesia — ignoring their pain and mocking their suffering. The hospital’s chief physician has denied the allegations. The regional health department says it’s launched an investigation, though it claims no official complaints have been filed. Meduza summarizes what we know about the allegations so far.
Two women told the independent news outlet Dozhd (TV Rain) that doctors at a public hospital in the Russian city of Surgut performed surgical procedures on them without anesthesia. Both told their stories on condition of anonymity.
One of the patients said she was admitted to the hospital for an abortion at seven weeks of pregnancy. She was told she would receive local anesthesia, but the medication failed to take effect. Though she immediately informed the doctor, obstetrics and gynecology specialist Mikhail Kurnosikov — who also serves as the hospital’s chief physician — that she was in “searing, unbearable pain,” he ignored her agony and continued the procedure, she said.
“He told me, ‘That’s what you deserve. Next time, you’ll know better than to get an abortion,’” she recalled. “I was in shock from the pain for a full hour afterward.”
The other woman told Dozhd that she was admitted to the same hospital in 2018 for a gynecological surgery. “Normally, they administer anesthesia and wait for it to take effect. In my case, everything happened very quickly. But when it started, I thought I was going to black out from the pain,” she said. The woman said she only realized she hadn’t been given any local anesthesia after she was later readmitted. “I went through the entire procedure fully conscious, feeling everything,” she said.
Surgut’s public hospital Surgut city hospital VKontakte page
When Dozhd reached Kurnosikov for comment, the doctor first asked the reporter where she was calling from. Upon hearing she was in the Netherlands, he refused to discuss the allegations. “We don’t talk to Nazi subjects,” he said.
Speaking to the Russian news outlet Podyom, Kurnosikov denied any wrongdoing. “Everything was done in strict accordance with the law,” he said, dismissing the allegations as harassment. “This is a smear campaign. It’s just foreign agents writing this. It’s a targeted attack from abroad.”
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Reports of abortions being performed without anesthesia at Surgut’s public hospital surfaced in early March, when a patient shared her experience with the news outlet Ura.ru. “I was sent for a vacuum abortion for medical reasons, but they didn’t give me any anesthesia at all. They just started the procedure while I was in the chair, fully conscious. I screamed in pain, and they told me to shut my mouth and stop putting on a circus show,” she said.
The regional Health Ministry has not commented publicly on the matter. However, Mediazona noted that the official account of the region’s health department responded to a post about the case in a local VKontakte group. The comment stated that no official complaints had been filed against hospital staff but that the department had initiated a review of the allegations.
Mediazona also noted that reports of abortions performed without anesthesia appear in reviews of the hospital on the Russian online mapping service 2GIS. “I was admitted with a missed miscarriage,” one review reads. “They administered anesthesia but didn’t wait for it to take effect, so the procedure was performed while I was fully conscious. When I screamed in pain, they just said, ‘What, like you’ve never given birth?’”
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