More than half of Russian soldiers in Ukraine wounded severely enough to require medical examination have sustained injuries that require limb amputations, Deputy Labor Minister Alexei Vovchenko said Tuesday.
“This is such a vivid problem, it’s a lot,” Vovchenko said at a roundtable with Russian senators, as quoted by the government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
While Vovchenko did not provide the exact number of Russian soldiers wounded during Moscow’s 20-month invasion of its neighbor, the 54% rate of required amputations he identified may indicate the difficulties faced by the Armed Forces in Ukraine.
The Defense Ministry has not disclosed its number of wounded soldiers since March 2022, one month after the invasion began, when it said the figure stood at 3,825.
Vovchenko said Tuesday that one out of five wounded soldiers require upper limb amputations.
Eighty-four percent of the wounded are prescribed technical rehabilitation, receiving an average of three prosthetic devices each, he added.
“These aren’t just artificial limbs, but various wheelchairs, special clothes and orthopedic shoes,” Vovchenko said.
In September 2022, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that “more than 90%” of wounded soldiers had returned to the battlefield.
