MOSCOW, Feb 15 (IPS) - The once smart paratrooper's uniform on the disabled man begging money at a Moscow underground train stop is now tattered and worn but he wears his blue beret at a jaunty angle.
The wearer, identifying himself only as "Alexander" resides in the Komsomoslskaya metro station and he says he lost his right leg in Afghanistan and came to Moscow from the northern Russian town of Vorkuta. He is just one of an estimated 10 million disabled Russians struggling to survive the economic upheaval here that followed the collapse of the Russian economy.
Many of the disabled say are they prey of criminal gangs that flourish all over the former Soviet Union.
Yuri Tkachenko, 34, a disabled from Donestk region in eastern Ukraine, was lured to Moscow by two mobsters from Moldova. They promised him a decent job at prosthesis factory and a monthly salary of 150 dollars.
Instead they forced the hapless Yuri to beg on the streets and held his son as hostage, threatening to kill him if Yuri failed to deliver money.
That case was uncovered by Moscow police, but many other disabled beggars are known to be at the mercy of criminals, according to social workers.
Official figures put the number of disabled persons in Russia at 6.4 million, but sociologists said the actual number is about 10 million. According to official estimates, only one tenth of Russian disabled live in relative comfort, while two thirds are in desperate situation.
The high number of disabled include many pensioners with minor ailments who seek the status of disabled to get privileges, because their pensions are inadequate. Apart from the elderly, there are more than a million disabled children in Russia, according to official estimates.
"Russia needs a well established system of medical rehabilitation and social integration for the disabled," Anatoly Osadchikh, deputy minister of labour and social development, told IPS.
Russia's parliament approved a populist bill in 1995, granting hundreds of privileges to the disabled - but the current economic crisis that has emptied the state coffers has meant these obligations have not been honoured. The assistance - such as free bus or subway tickets - was estimated to cost Russia some 4.3 billion roubles (about USD 600 million at pre-crisis rate).
Many disabled children abandoned by their parents face an uncertaiun future in Russia's state-sponsored and underfunded orphanages, said a recent report by New York based Human Rights Watch. According to official statistics, some 30,000 children - labeled retarded - are confined in these institutions, which are ''little better than prisons.''
The past three decades has shown a tenfold rise of the traumatic disabilities among Russians, notably children, according to Dr. Boris Spivak of the Institute of Prosthesis.
Before the Soviet break up, limbless persons could receive an artifical device from the government but now the majority simply cannot afford to pay up to 2,000 dollars for a modern prosthesis, he said.
The Russian government allocated 500 million roubles to provide free prosthesis this year - compared to the 330 million last year. But devaluation meant that this actually represented a cut in funding of about 35 million dollars - and could be even further reduced if the financial crisis continued.
Corrupt officials have been no help either. Officials at the Orthopaedic Institute in St. Petersburg set up a private association and transferred state-supplied money to bogus firms where the funds disappeared, according to police who are still hunting those involved.
Private charities have yet to emerge as an alternative to state funding and suffer from a poor image dating from Soviet times, when workers had ``contributions'' automatically deducted from their wages and put into state-run charity funds. They rarely saw their money doing any good.
Many charities also have been found engaged in murky business dealings, including the Afghan War Invalids Foundation supposed to assist disabled veterans.
Mikhail Likhodei, an army lieutenant colonel who lost a leg and an eye in that war, was head of a group that ousted former intelligence officer Valery Radchikov - also disabled veteran - from the chairmanship of the Foundation because of alleged corruption.
Radchikov was accused of being involved in shady business deals of 800 million dollars worth of duty free liquor, cigarettes, and food - the sale of which was supposed to aid disabled veterans.
Then Likhodei along with his bodyguard, was killed in a bomb blast in the elevator of his apartment building in Moscow in 1994. A year later Radchikov was shot and wounded in an apparent assassination attempt.
In November 1996, Likhodei's wife and others gathered at the Kotlyakovskoye cemetery in southern Moscow for a memorial service for. A bomber had buried several kilograms of explosives near the grave, and detonated them from a distance.
In total, 14 people died in the blast - among them Likhodei's widow, his mother, and the successor to his job - dismembered body parts hung down from the trees in the cemetery. Now Radchikov has been charged with orchestrating the Kotlyakovskoye cemetery massacre.
There are some brighter examples of the disabled helping themselves - like the All Russian Society for the Disabled (ARSD), a non-governmental organisation working to change the attitude toward people with disabilities in Russia.
ARSD wants to develop social programmes and policies that will enhance the lives of the disabled in Russia and integrate them with society, said Lidiya Zaborovskaya, an organiser for the Society.
ARSD has some 2.5 million members with 2,500 district offices and 24,000 grassroots cells spread across the country. The heads of the grassroots cells work without compensation - a form of community service, Zaborovskaya says.
ASRD owns 1500 businesses - which employs 22,000 disabled - and profits are used fund its regional and district branches. "We hope to set up a civilised network of institutions to tackle the issues of the disabled within the next 15-20 years," says Zaborobskaya.
But analysts agree that a "civilised network" is still long way off in Russia. For instance, if parliament passes the new tax code in its current form charities, including distributors of free soup, may have to pay value-added tax and recipients of free prosthesis will have to face income tax inspectors. (END/IPS/sb/mk/99) -- Yoshie
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