How Russia Is Using Disabled Soldiers For Frontline Assaults
A disabled Russian soldier on the frontline.
SOCIAL MEDIA CAPTURE
Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has produced vast numbers of casualties over four and a half years of fighting. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, in a July report, estimated Russian casualties at 1.4 million. Over a 24-hour period on August 11, Ukraine’s General Staff claimed Russia suffered 1,190 casualties. The losses are staggering, and analysts say the Kremlin has faced difficulties recruiting enough soldiers to sustain its offensive in Ukraine.
Pro-war Russian bloggers have said that commanders have fed Vladimir Putin overly optimistic assessments of battlefield progress, reinforcing the Kremlin’s belief that greater manpower can eventually break Ukrainian lines. The result is a system that prioritizes having enough manpower to feed into Ukraine’s “drone wall” and continue making incremental gains.
“A group of wounded or disabled soldiers is sent forward, they are destroyed, and Russian forces observe where Ukrainian drones launch from and where Ukrainian firing points are located,” Mykola Melnyk, a former officer from the 47th Mechanized Brigade, told me. “They then try to suppress those positions before sending in more capable infantry.”
Reports have documented disabled soldiers being sent back into battle. Melnyk said these soldiers can be used as decoys or bait, distracting Ukrainian drone operators while more capable soldiers cross through a field. If they are struck, he said, Russian forces can use the attack to identify Ukrainian positions and potentially locate drone operators. According to a report by the New York Times from April 2023, even prisoners with HIV were offered treatment if they signed on with the Wagner Group and survived the intense assaults soldiers were sent on.
“Russian commanders are placed in a situation where they are ordered to assault, but do not have enough capable troops to do it,” said Melnyk. “Since they are not held accountable for heavy losses, they send forward the wounded, the disabled, and anyone else they can.”
Wounded Soldiers Sent Back Into Battle
In May 2026, 50-year-old Sergei Aleksandrovich Pisarchik, a soldier in the Russian Army’s 69th Motorized Rifle Division, sent a final video to his relatives, according to the Russian anti-war Telegram channel Mobilization News. It showed six disabled Russian soldiers, some on crutches, being sent into battle in Ukraine with three bulletproof vests and two automatic rifles between them.
“The culture of the Russian army dates back to 1941 and it has not changed,” said Melnyk. “There is no respect for human life, and military expediency is placed above any human values. That is why the so-called ‘battalion of cripples’ is nothing new. This existed during the Second World War, and it continues today.”
Footage has repeatedly emerged of Ukrainian drones encountering disabled Russian soldiers, some walking on crutches or with sticks. In November 2025, the Russian military Telegram channel “Brothers in Arms,” which publishes accounts submitted by Russian soldiers at the front, described what it called the army’s “cripple regiments.”
Soldiers from Russia’s 51st Army told the channel, “The partially recovered are sent to the front lines, they don’t roll back the 300s [wounded], and they’re sent further. No leave, no compensation. No vacations. There are no rotations.” The Telegram channel called out a separate commander who after an inspection of a wounded soldier, said, “Tie a crutch to his leg and let him go to the line of contact.”
Russian blogger Anastasia Kashevarova, who has nearly 250,000 subscribers on Telegram and previously served as an adviser to State Duma chairman Vyacheslav Volodin, called attention to the systemic use of injured soldiers in combat missions in 2024. She wrote, “In my memory, they tried to send a volunteer to the front who had shrapnel that injured the spinal cord and was stuck in the spine: his legs were paralyzed, his blood pressure was going through the roof, and he was told, roughly speaking: go to the front with your shrapnel and don’t show off. It was a whole saga just to remove this shrapnel from the person.”
The Pressure Behind Russia’s Assaults
Part of the pressure to use disabled soldiers stems from a broader problem within the Russian military with commanders fearing punishment from their superiors, often exaggerating their gains on the battlefield, effectively taking “territory on credit.” They may report advancing farther than they actually have, creating pressure on troops to turn those claims into reality. Russian forces have repeatedly sent small groups of soldiers to infiltrate Ukrainian positions and plant a flag, providing commanders with supposed evidence of progress even when they do not control the ground. The New Voice of Ukraine, citing the Institute for the Study of War, reported in June that Russia used AI to produce videos showing the Russian flag in certain areas to falsify tactical success.
The danger of this for the Kremlin was reflected in late 2025, when Russian commanders reported to Putin that they had captured Kupiansk, according to the Financial Times. Weeks later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared near the city, recording a video beside the Kupiansk entrance sign as Ukrainian forces continued to hold much of the area.
“Russia realizes it’s fighting a long attritional war and understands that another full mobilization would carry political risks at home, already with discontent spreading,” Shaun Pinner, a former British soldier who fought in Mariupol in 2022 before being captured, told me. “Recycling wounded personnel, clearing hospital beds and refilling depleted assault units helps sustain battlefield numbers without openly admitting the scale of the strain.”
The strategy of deploying injured, older or poorly equipped soldiers limits Russia’s success on the battlefield and its ability to conduct future operations. “The more a military relies on exhausted, injured or poorly motivated men to sustain momentum, the harder it becomes to maintain morale, initiative and operational quality over time,” added Pinner.
Russia’s growing use of disabled soldiers offers a warning to Europe. In a future conflict with NATO, Russia could again rely on its willingness to absorb enormous casualties to sustain an attritional fight, potentially testing whether European militaries and governments are prepared to sustain such a war. “It absolutely reflects a system where manpower is often treated as expendable in ways most Western militaries would find deeply unacceptable,” said Pinner.