Wife of patient killed in Russian drone strike at Medikom clinic to seek compensation, citing negligence
The wife of the patient who died after a Russian drone hit the building of the Medikom clinic (Kyiv), Natalia Smashna, will demand compensation from the clinic, accusing it of negligence that led to the death of her husband.
"My husband was at the Medikom clinic, where he was battling pneumonia. He entrusted his life to the doctors who were supposed to treat him. That night, the doctors should have at least woken my husband and offered to take him to the shelter, but they did not. They were negligent, and in a single moment, that negligence ended his life," she said at a news conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Friday.
Smashna emphasized that clinic staff "should escort people to shelters."
"You didn’t even give my husband a chance to survive. He didn’t even know there was danger. He just burned alive. My husband died, but it could have been avoided if he had been woken and taken to the shelter," she said.
Meanwhile, Oleksiy Shevchuk, a partner at the Barristers law firm, said that Smashna had approached the clinic to request compensation for the costs related to her late husband’s burial.
"She is alone now; her husband is gone. She told the clinic: help cover the burial expenses so we could lay my husband to rest properly and honor him. She buried him herself. She asked for compensation, and they refused," he said.
Shevchuk said, "If I were the clinic, knowing the tragedy this woman endured—and that it happened on the clinic’s premises—I would have personally found her and helped her get through the grief, rather than sitting abroad as one of the clinic’s owners."
"We will find him. We will raise the question of why the owner of Medikom, who is abroad, is evading mobilization. We will find everyone involved in trampling on her dignity. She only asked for help with compensation so her child could at least attend kindergarten next year. She has no means to live right now," he said.
Shevchuk added that the police in Kyiv’s Obolon district have not yet opened a case to investigate the clinic’s negligence following Smashna’s complaint.
Meanwhile, Barristers partner Yuriy Radzievsky said that "the staff at Medikom clinic apparently failed to fulfill their obligations to their patients."
"We spoke with other patients who were in the Medikom clinic that night. No one woke them, no one warned them about the alarm, and no one escorted them to the shelter. The staff fled and abandoned their patients," he said.
Radzievsky emphasized that if Medikom clinic "does not see any responsibility for what happened, we will prove it in court."
"In court, we will present all the evidence, call witnesses who will testify that no one warned about the alarm, no one told patients to go to the shelter, and no one even showed where the shelter was located. We will prove that Medikom clinic must take responsibility and resolve all issues for the family of the person who died due to the clinic’s negligence," he said.
"All documents and statements are already prepared and will be submitted to the competent authorities in the near future," he said.
According to reports, on the night of January 5, the inpatient facility of Medikom clinic at 9 Obolonska Embankment suffered significant damage from a drone strike, killing a patient. The strike occurred at 2:40. At the time of the attack, 26 patients were in the facility. All the affected patients were evacuated to other medical centers.
