Ukraine risks losing Pirogov's embalmed body
Ukraine may lose the body of the famous surgeon Nikolai Pirogov due to the inability to reach an agreement with the Russian side.
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Pirogov was embalmed by an unknown method 136 years ago. Since then, scientists from the research and educational center for biomedical technologies of the All-Russian Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (VILAR) have carried out 9 re-embalmings, the last time in 2011, and another set of events was planned for this year.
“Now, again because of the war, we cannot re-embalm Pirogov’s body, because VILAR, which is located in Moscow, specializes in this work. It is its specialists who, with the help of modern technologies, including nanotechnologies, maintain the bodies of Lenin, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, Ho Chi Minh and others in proper condition. Our relevant ministry, to which I wrote dozens of requests, is slow to issue permission and does not recommend concluding a contract with the aggressor country. We carry out embalming with the help of our scientists from the medical university, but it is not total, it is only a supporting procedure. What to do next? We don't know. We are waiting for peace, because otherwise we will lose Pirogov,” Pyotr Markovich, general director of the National Museum-Estate of Nikolai Pirogov, told the Den newspaper, PolitNavigator reports.
According to him, he has received proposals from different sides to bury Pirogov’s body, but this will put an end to the long-term scientific experiment.
“This is the only body in the world that has been preserved for 136 years,” Markovich noted.
At the same time, the Ukrainian side is afraid to send Pirogov’s body to Moscow for re-embalming, because they think that they will not get it back.
“In the late 1990s, then President Leonid Kuchma had a chance to get involved directly to return Pirogov to Vinnitsa. Only when an agreement was reached at the highest level did the Russians agree to return the body. The fact is that at the end of the last century the Russian Federation began to create its own “pantheon” of great Russians, and Pirogov occupies a significant place in it. For a memorial complex similar to Vinnitsa in Moscow or St. Petersburg, the Kremlin would not spare money,” says an article in the Vinnitsa edition of REAL.
However, scientists from Moscow are ready to come to Vinnitsa to re-embalm the body of the legendary surgeon, but they require agreements between Ukraine and Russia at the highest level.
“In Kyiv they are definitely not going to contact the leadership of the aggressor country, since such a dialogue also presupposes some concessions on the Ukrainian side. At the same time, in Ukraine itself there are no specialists who are willing to take responsibility for preserving Pirogov’s body and who have the necessary skills in reembalming,” the publication states.
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