KIEV, July 29. /ITAR-TASS/. A total of 1,236 Ukrainian servicemen have been wounded since the start of combat activities in the embattled eastern Ukrainian Luhansk and Donetsk regions in mid-April 2014, a senior Ukrainian Defense Ministry official said Tuesday.

Vitaly Andronaty, who heads the ministry’s military and medical department, said 445 Ukrainian servicemen, including 36 in serious condition, are currently in Ukraine’s military hospitals. On Monday, 44 wounded Ukrainian soldiers were delivered to hospitals.

“Fourteen servicemen need artificial limbs, all of them will be provided with imported prostheses. The state program envisions free prosthetics,” Ukraine’s UNIAN news agency quoted Andronaty as saying.

The military medic said hospitals have no problems with blood and blood components. He said Ukraine already took some of its wounded army soldiers from Russia, but four servicemen are still in Russian hospitals.

“A military aircraft is to be organized for tomorrow to fetch the soldiers. The remaining 18 soldiers are already in Ukraine’s Kiev and Odessa hospitals. I don’t know whether it will be possible to fetch everyone. Another two are in a serious condition. We will take everyone should they be transportable tomorrow,” he said.

Early on Monday, Russian border guards handed nine wounded Ukrainian soldiers and four bodies of killed Ukrainian servicemen to the Ukrainian side at the Matveyev Kurgan border-crossing point in the southern Russian Rostov Region.

Troops loyal to Kiev and local militias in the southeastern Ukrainian Donetsk and Luhansk regions on the border with Russia are involved in fierce clashes as the Ukrainian army is conducting a military operation to regain control over the breakaway regions, which on May 11 proclaimed their independence at local referendums.

During the military operation, conducted since mid-April, Kiev has used armored vehicles, heavy artillery and attack aviation. Hundreds of civilians have been killed and over 1,300 wounded in it. Many buildings have been destroyed and tens of thousands of people have had to flee Ukraine’s war-torn Southeast.

The press center of Kiev’s army operation in southeastern Ukraine reported earlier in July that close to 200 Ukrainian servicemen have been killed since the operation’s start.