Maxim Goncharenko, 42, is from the Amur region and lives in Donetsk. Since childhood, the man has suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, has a hallucinatory-paranoid syndrome. Despite this, on February 24, 2022, he voluntarily went to war, ending up in military unit 42600, his wife Svetlana tells ASTRA.
“He went by himself. He was sitting at home, something came into his head, he went, he did not undergo a medical examination. We weren’t married yet, and that’s how it turned out,” says the man’s wife.
During his military service, Goncharenko contracted hepatitis C. In August 2023, a man was injured in the abdominal cavity, after which schizophrenia worsened, and he was taken to a psychiatric hospital by ambulance. The soldier tried to escape from there several times.
Then, in Donetsk, he passed the military medical commission, received the category “D” (unfit for military service). This status was confirmed in medical institutions in Rostov, St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad, Svetlana says. Goncharenko spent about six months in hospitals, during which time he was seconded to military unit 34495. The man “did not take time off” all his vacations and has been in the unit since August 4.
“Now he is in his unit, they want to transfer him to a medical clinic, but this has been going on for 1.5 months. They don’t let him go on vacation or on leave. He just sits in the unit, people come to the unit who select the guys for the front line,” says Svetlana.
Goncharenko wrote a discharge report twice, but the commanders say they are still collecting documents for his transfer to the medical center, and from there he is supposed to be fired. At the same time, a man needs to regularly take strong psychotropic drugs, which must be done under the supervision of a doctor.
“My husband has awards, he received some of them, served for the Motherland. The problem is just the firing process! And the fact is that it’s hard for him to stay in the unit — in his condition, he may forget to take a pill, he may drink a double dose and he starts to panic there, his condition worsens. Why is the dismissal being delayed?” — says Goncharenko’s wife.
