One had head and chest wounds and lost his left eye and his hearing in both ears. Another was blind in one eye and could see only dim, blurred shapes through the other. A third had broken bones, multiple shrapnel wounds, a ruptured radial nerve, and a “completely useless right arm” that “just hangs there, dangling.”
All three Russian men, seriously wounded in the war against Ukraine, were sent back to the front despite their condition, according to relatives, friends, and activists.
As Russia struggles to replace soldiers being killed and wounded in huge numbers in the fifth year of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there is mounting evidence of the military returning men to the war despite severe injuries and, in some cases, medical reports saying they are not fit for further service in combat.
Wounded soldiers have been plucked from homes and hospitals — or sent back into battle before they have a chance to get away from the war zone, activists say.
Pavel Podgrushny, 38, enlisted in 2023 and was sprung from prison not long after he was sentenced to eight years over a fatal car crash, according to a relative, Dmitry, whose full name is being withheld for safety reasons.
By December, Podgrushny was sent to the front, and he was hospitalized in April 2024.
“He suffered head and chest injuries. He lost his left eye. He lost his hearing — his eardrums ruptured,” Dmitry said, adding that Podgrushny was sent home to recover and declared temporarily unfit for service — but never got the documents confirming that status.
“Why are you so worried? They’ll come later,” Dmitry quoted the chief doctor at the hospital in the southern city of Volgograd where he had been treated as saying. “They can’t take him back to the army without an eye.”
But his family fears that’s exactly what happened.
‘Beyond Belief’
Last September, Podgrushny was summoned to a recruitment center. Later he was declared a deserter and spent six months fighting for a formal discharge. One day, abruptly, he was detained and his phone confiscated, and his family has not heard from him since.
“He simply won’t survive a month” in the combat zone, Dmitry said. “It’s beyond belief.”
Podgrushny’s case is not far from unique, said Igor, a rights activist. He cited the example of Mikhail, who was raised in an orphanage and was seriously wounded three months after signing a contract in June 2024, left with badly limited vision in his remaining eye.
After he struggled to receive even basic treatment, a medical commission “declared him fit for duty in five minutes, detained him, and the next day, they sent him — blind — to the front,” said Igor, who did not want his last name published for security reasons.
According to Igor, there are increasingly frequent instances of military officers coming to the homes of soldiers who have been discharged for medical reasons and dragooning them back into service.
“They force them to sign a new contract. They’re usually locked up in the guardhouse for a few days. They’re simply left in the barracks, in a cell, without food or water. And they’re forced to sign a paper stating that the last military medical commission [finding] was ‘fake,'” he said. “After that, they organize a new commission for them. It will then declare the discharged soldier fit for service. There’s no way out.”
“The wounded and their families are just stunned as their own army drags them out of their homes, blind and on crutches. But the situation is getting even worse,” Igor said: To avoid searching for discharged soldiers at addresses where they may not be registered, commanders sometimes save time by hauling them straight from the hospital.
‘The Last Drop Of Blood’
That’s what happened to Andrei Perevalov, 26, according to a friend, Sergei.
“He has fractures, multiple shrapnel [wounds] all over his body,” among other injuries, and his right arm hangs by his side, Andrei said of Perevalov, who he said was seriously wounded twice and is now “simply incapacitated.”
Nevertheless, Sergei said, the military “took him straight to the front, to the combat zone” near Pokrovsk, a Donetsk region city that Russia captured early this year after many months of deadly fighting. “He’s recording voice messages for me — you can hear explosions in the background.”
“He’s no fighter in this condition, and they’re giving the order to ‘move forward,'” he said “What’s going on? Are they just throwing bodies all over Ukraine? Squeezing us until the last drop of blood?”
Some wounded soldiers don’t even make it to the hospital, Igor said, before they are ordered to join a new assault on Ukrainian forces.
Wounded soldiers contact their units “from a trench or a destroyed building. They tell you their name, age, where and how they were wounded. Commanders simply refuse to hospitalize them, even if the wounds are open,” he told RFE/RL.
He described a recent case in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, where some of the deadliest fighting has taken place as Russia tries to capture the province in its entirety.
“A 23-year-old guy, call sign ‘Poet,’ named Artyom Shirokov. After yet another assault, he was seriously wounded — a piece of shrapnel in his leg, arm, and back. ‘You’re limping and bleeding, but you can move? You’re going on an assault!'” the activist said. “Will such a ‘fighter’ return from his next combat mission? Unlikely.”
Manpower And Mobilization
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government has taken numerous steps to maintain troops numbers amid the massive casualties: nearly 500,000 killed since the start of the full-scale invasion, according to a British intelligence estimate in late May.
The military has aggressively recruited prison inmates, intoxicated men, and the homeless, and has promised high pay and bonuses for soldiers and the families of fighters who are killed.
Last month, Putin signed a decree relieving new recruits of up to 10 million rubles ($137,000) in debt. So far, he has avoided ordering a mass call-up since a wide-scale mobilization he decreed in September 2022 prompted hundreds of thousands of Russians to flee the country.
With US-brokered peace talks halted and no sign of an end to the war in sight, Russia has been gaining ground only very slowly in Donetsk and other front-line regions, and during some periods of time losing more ground than it gains.
Bato-Munko Tsybenov was serving in his native Buryatia region when Putin luamched the full-scale invasion. An assistant gunner and grenade launcher operator, he was wounded by a mine blast in March 2024.
“The first time, he spent a month recovering, and in April 2024, they took him back” to Ukraine, a former neighbor, Dashima, told RFE/RL. “Six months later, he returned [to Buryatia] again” after a new injury.
“They say all the toes on his right foot were amputated. He could barely walk around the village, with a cane.” said Dashima, whose last name is also being withheld. But “the following April, they took him again. He died that same month, literally a few days later.”
