Russia is sending convicted female prisoners to battlefields in eastern Ukraine, a British newspaper reported, noting that this comes as the Kremlin pushes forward with its costly offensive in this war-torn region.

This was quoted by The Times as citing a Ukrainian military source, which was corroborated by the head of a Russian human rights group.

"Last week a train carrying prisoners was seen heading to the Donetsk region," the Ukrainian General Staff said, adding: "One of the carriages had female prisoners in it."

Olga Romanova, head of the prisoners' rights association Russia Behind Bars, said Moscow had been recruiting female prisoners since the end of last year.

Romanova said about 100 of them were taken from prisons in Russia's southern Krasnodar region and deployed in Ukraine, but it was unclear exactly where they were sent.

Fighting in Pakhmut remains intense (Reuters)

Ukraine's military claimed last month that Russia had removed 50 convicts from Snezhny prison, a city in the Donetsk region occupied by Russian forces, and sent them to Russia for military training.

The head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said in December that a group of female prisoners in Nizhny Tagil, a city 1100,<> miles east of Moscow, had asked to be deployed to Ukraine as paramedics or military communications.