Key Points – Mounting evidence, including videos and eyewitness reports from late 2024 and 2025, reveals Russia is deploying wounded soldiers, some on crutches, to the front lines in Ukraine.
This practice is part of a broader strategy where Moscow uses what it considers “disposable” troops—including prisoners from “Storm-Z” units and recently deployed North Korean soldiers—for the most dangerous assaults to absorb heavy casualties.
This allows Russia to preserve its more experienced professional soldiers for specialized operations.
While signaling a brutal approach to manpower, this tactic enables Russia to sustain its attritional warfare despite staggering losses approaching one million casualties.
Meet Putin’s Disposable Soldiers in Ukraine
Mounting evidence and testimony, which began to emerge in late 2024, reveals how Russia is deploying wounded soldiers to the Ukrainian frontlines.
Multiple sources have confirmed the legitimacy of video evidence and photographs shared online in recent months depicting Russian soldiers on the frontlines using walking sticks and crutches, and some with bandaged limbs.
Reports continue to emerge as Russia grapples with a reported one million soldier casualties so far – and while the reports are shocking, they do not suggest that Russia is in immediate trouble, or that it cannot continue fighting. In fact, Russia not only has a larger army now than it did before the war, but a combination of wounded soldiers and inexperienced North Korean servicemen are giving Moscow access to large numbers of effectively disposable soldiers to assist on the frontlines.
What the Reports Say
Multiple sources have confirmed that Russia is redeploying wounded soldiers to the Ukrainian front lines, sometimes before they have completed medical treatment.
CNN reported in February that Ukrainian drone footage has captured Russian troops using crutches and walking aids in active combat zones, and in one particularly harrowing video, posted by Ukraine’s 59th Brigade, a wounded Russian soldier can be seen using crutches to flee a drone strike near Pokrovsk. In the clip, the soldier moves slowly across open ground before a mortar round is dropped on him.
Videos like this have circulated for some time, too, with many emerging in late 2024. In another shocking video, two Russian soldiers are seen using crutches, with one man also using a stick for support.
In December 2024, Novosti published videos of hospitalized troops being led away in handcuffs. One soldier, handcuffed to his hospital bed, accused commanders of ordering the redeployment of injured men still suffering from conditions like hepatitis. Relatives also claimed that the remaining soldiers were labeled deserters and barred from using their phones or going outside.
Is Russia Desperate in Ukraine?
While the reports may appear to signal desperation, they may actually point to a more disturbing reality: Russia is using wounded or less capable soldiers to feed the “meat grinder,” preserving its professional contract troops and healthier, younger recruits for more strategically important operations.
Intelligence has suggested since at least last year that Russia is deliberately deploying “disposable” troops to the most dangerous parts of the battlefield. In February, reports confirmed that North Korean forces were the latest “expendable” resource being sent to harsh frontline conditions. While North Korean soldiers sent to fight for Russia are believed to be “elite” forces, they have repeatedly been deployed alongside Russian prison units.
In April 2023, British intelligence cited troop losses as high as 40-70% among “Storm-Z” units made up of prisoners given just two weeks of training before being sent to the front lines.
Russia’s high casualty rate has not deterred Moscow from continuing to fight in Ukraine, and there are no signs that the war will come to an end any time soon.
While Russia has lost significant numbers of its professional contract troops, those soldiers are increasingly being deployed in less dangerous regions and used for more specialist operations, while North Korean soldiers, prisoners, and even wounded troops are being treated as disposable.
About the Author:
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society. His latest book is The Truth Teller: RFK Jr. and the Case for a Post-Partisan Presidency.
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Swamplaw Yankee
June 14, 2025 at 1:43 am
The question of semantics arises. The op-ed lazies forget that the re-conquest of Ukraine uses men of different origin. The majority of conscripts are from enslaved captive nations. The meme is that these ethnic nations are kept poor and the men see the sign up money are the prime motivator.
The danger signal for the WEST is that a significant conscript number are from the PRK courtesy of the Han CCP Xi cabal. Xi supports Putin with the ground hog day show of endless military hardware and endless conscrips for the meat grinder.
The last source of conscript numbers is from the orc muscovite peasant russian ethnics. The Putin cabal loves this contribution as the russian peasant is pampered with behind the front line assignments, often tasked with pushing captive ethnics forcefully to the front meat grinder line.
The WEST needs to counter with the exact number of troops that the Han CCP Xi has supplied. This challenge by Xi to the WEST is ignored by the MAGA POTUS Trump. Why? The reality is that the USA should challenge Xi on the hardware and men that he allows into the re-conquest of Ukraine. That the MAGA Trump can not mouth a demand to the Han CCP Xi cabal, is a serious sign that the POTUS Trump has actually self-abdicated any effective role as the leader of the WEST. Maybe Trump has announced that he does not have the adroit cognitive chess skills to outplay Putin and Xi.
The WEST needs to demand the return of all illegally occupied Ukrainian soil. The return of Ukrainian soil will bring back control of a lost geopolitical advantage, the control of Crimean and the black/Azov sea zones. The last duty of Trump can be that Trump demands that Putin immediately begins pre-payment of $10,000.000 in gold bullion as compensation + reparation for each and every human trafficked Ukrainian child and before any more coded words like peace and cease fire are even breathed about.
As Putin has paid the 100,000 th Ukrainian child and trafficked youth The WEST will hear that excuse that Gold bullion is suddenly very hard for Putin to find.
As the kidnapped children are released, the “Lolita” dream of the russian peasant deviant will vanish. With no Putin “Lolita” kidnap child waiting free of cost in Moscow, the peasant russian conscript will have their hidden ancient russian need for “Lolita” forever unattainable, gone from their table top dancing future.
That time is when the conscript will not sign up or mutiny to leave the meat grinder “front”. That is when the 2014 re-start of the re-conquest of Ukraine will wilt at the front line level. Whatever Putin may say, the payment of $10,000,000 in gold bullion per child will devastate the russian budget and devastate the hidden inner motivation of the peasant russian to support the war meat grinder.
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