Wounded Russians are being sent back to Ukraine with major injuries like punctured lungs and shrapnel still in their bodies, report says

• Wounded Russian soldiers are being sent to Ukraine to fight despite their injuries, according to a report.
• Soldiers with damaged lungs and shrapnel wounds have been returned to the frontline.

Severely injured Russian soldiers are being returned to the frontline in Ukraine without the approval of military doctors, independent Russian news outlet Agentstvo reported on Thursday.

In one instance, two Russian soldiers with punctured lungs were sent into combat, instead of to a military medical commission for examination, Valentina Melnikova, executive secretary of the Union of the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, said, per Agentstvo.

In another example, soldiers with shrapnel wounds were returned to fight, without the shrapnel being removed, according to a translation of the article by independent media outlet Meduza.

There are "an unacceptable number" of documented cases of commanders sidestepping military doctors and instead sending wounded soldiers straight from the hospital to the frontline, Melnikova told Agentstvo, per a Meduza translation.

There have also been cases of soldiers receiving treatment for ulcers, heart attacks, and strokes being sent back to Ukraine, she said.

The presidential Human Rights Council in Russia is investigating the matter after receiving complaints from hospital staff in Moscow and in the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk in Ukraine, council member Olga Demicheva told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency on Tuesday.

"We learned of a situation in which fighters who had received high-tech medical care with recommendations for rehabilitation and follow-up care were sent straight to the front instead of rehabilitation," Demicheva said.

"As a result, the treatments that they received simply go down the drain," Demicheva added, according to a translation by the International Business Times.

In November, Army Gen. Mark Milley, the highest-ranking US military officer, estimated that "well over" 100,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded in the war in Ukraine, according to The Washington Post.

Newsweek reported this week that Russia is building new hospitals in response to a growing number of injuries among its troops, citing a daily update from the Ukrainian army.