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LONDON, March 28 (Reuters) - Britain and Poland will build two temporary villages in western and central Ukraine to provide housing for those forced from their homes by Russia's invasion, London said on Tuesday, pledging 10 million pounds ($12.3 million) in funding.

Almost 118,000 Ukrainians have been hosted by British families as part of the government's response to Russia's February 2022 invasion, but some are finding it increasingly difficult to get permanent housing.

Britain's government said the villages in Lviv in western Ukraine and Poltava in central Ukraine would be able to house more than 700 people, a fraction of the millions either displaced in Ukraine or who have fled the country.

"For the past year, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has continued to target civilian homes and infrastructure, with the Ukrainian people paying a heavy price," British foreign minister James Cleverly said in a statement.

"This new UK-Poland partnership will help bring light, heat and homes to those most in need."

($1 = 0.8149 pounds)

Reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Editing by Kylie MacLellan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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UK, Poland to build new temporary villages in Ukraine - Reuters

LONDON/KYIV, March 28 (Reuters) - The steady stream of wounded soldiers into a clinic for artificial limbs in Kyiv is a stark reminder of the human cost of Russia's war on Ukraine, where military casualties are a secret closely guarded by both sides.

Unrelenting artillery fire along a 1,000-km (600-mile) front line and Russia's frequent use of missiles across the country mean that shrapnel wounds are maiming people in Ukraine on a scale just beginning to emerge.

"Unfortunately, the number of patients has increased significantly," said Andrii Ovcharenko, who works with a team of medics and technicians at the "Without Limits" prosthetics clinic, one of almost 80 now operating in Ukraine.

Clinic owner Nagender Parashar's Kyiv-based company made about 7,000 prosthetic components in the second half of last year, equal to the total produced in 2021. "It's still not enough," he said.

Parashar has 25 specialists at the nine clinics he owns in Ukraine; the busiest - Kyiv and Lviv - would see 20 to 30 patients a month, but now it is three times that number and he says he needs up to 75 more specialists to cope.

Russia has poured extra troops and artillery into the fight this year and some analysts have compared the months of intense, inconclusive trench warfare in eastern Ukraine to World War One.

"There really is a shortage of prosthetists, because there are a huge number of people requiring prosthetic treatment coming in every day," Ukrainian Health Minister Viktor Liashko told Reuters in an interview.

"Now the priority is upper limbs, so those specialists who deal with this are overloaded."

On a recent morning, Ovcharenko's Kyiv clinic assessed two soldiers for artificial legs and adjusted the new limb of a third. A handful more came for rehabilitation exercises. Staff said a recent Russian missile attack on Kyiv had put others off.

Denys said he lost his left leg when a Russian missile landed 50 metres from his unit in the eastern city of Kramatorsk.

"My comrade behind the dugout received shrapnel wounds and bled to death," the 28-year-old told Reuters as he sat in a wheelchair, declining to give his full name.

He said it was a gift from God that he had survived and there was no sense in complaining. He planned to return to civilian life once he had recuperated. According to Ovcharenko, many amputee soldiers volunteer to return to the war.

Dmytro Zilko had a newly fitted artificial limb to replace his right leg, amputated after a shell landed nearby during fighting in a village close to the eastern town of Bakhmut - where the fiercest battles of the conflict still rage.

"They cut my leg off in Druzhkivka," the 22-year-old said, referring to a town west of Bakhmut. "This is my fourth exercise day. As soon as I stood on my prosthetic leg, I felt alive."

Germany's Ottobock - the world's biggest prosthetic equipment maker by market share - sold roughly twice as many foot prosthetics in the second half of 2022 as all of 2021, its CEO Oliver Jakobi told Reuters, attributing the rise to the war.

Before Russia's full-scale invasion 13 months ago, the ratio of lower limbs and upper limbs was about 9 to one, while it was now probably 50-50, he said.

Ukraine has around 300 prosthetists, technicians and apprentices, but only five can fit functional devices like hands and arms, said Antonina Kumka, founder of charity Protez Hub which works with 79 prosthetics clinics across the country, up from 65 in 2021.

Artificial limbs like elbows are in demand, she added, with some people having to wait up to six months to be fitted.

At least 100 patients had been fitted abroad, she said, noting that the practice is not ideal given patients need long-term follow-up.

Experts say Ukraine will need big investment in infrastructure and staff to deal with amputees needing help for years to come: a lower limb prosthetic can cost anywhere from $500 to as much as $70,000 for more sophisticated equipment.

The number of prostheses paid for by Ukraine's Ministry of Social Policy jumped more than 15% to 13,219 in 2022 from a year earlier, according to previously unreported ministry data.

Healing following amputation surgeries before new limbs can be fitted can take up to four months and there is another lag before the government makes a payment.

U.S. Army General Mark Milley estimated in November at least 100,000 Russian military casualties - killed or wounded, with "probably" the same for Ukraine. Some Western officials have suggested that number had doubled on the Russian side by February. Neither side gives updated figures.

Oleksandra Kazarian, CEO of the Ortonet association for prosthetic and orthopaedic enterprises in Ukraine, said the numbers treated by one company, Tellus, had risen 20% last year from nearly 600 a year earlier across three clinics. It expects another 30-40% rise in 2023.

It plans to expand, depending on how the war unfolds but is not sure where to open new clinics.

"Where's a safe place?" Kazarian said. "You never know."

Additional reporting and writing by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Josephine Mason and Philippa Fletcher

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Ukraine needs more prosthetics clinicians as war toll mounts - Reuters

Thomas Bach, the head of the International Olympic Committee, has today defended plans to get Russian and Belarusian athletes back into competitions as neutrals.

He claimed their participation "works" despite the war in Ukraine.

The IOC sanctioned Russia and Belarus after the 2022 invasion, but is now eager to see athletes have a chance to qualify for the Paris Olympics.

It has set out a pathway for these competitors to earn Olympic slots through Asian qualifying and has left it up to international federations to decide on organisation.

But Ukraine has since threatened to boycott the Paris 2024 Games should these athletes try to compete there, even as neutrals.

"Participation of athletes with Russian and Belarusian passports in international competitions works," Mr Bach said today.

"We see this almost every day in a number of sports, most prominently in tennis but also in cycling, in some table tennis competitions.

"We see it in ice hockey, handball, we see it in football and in other leagues in the United States but also in Europe and we also see it in other continents," he said.

"In none of these competition security incidents have been happening."

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Ukraine war - latest updates: Russia says it has intercepted US ... - Sky News

Beijing has repeated its calls for a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine crisis following reports that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in neighbouring Belarus, reports Nicola Smith.

Last year, the leaders of the five nuclear-weapon states released a joint statement, in which they affirmed that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought and stressed the importance of the avoidance of war between nuclear-weapon states and the reduction of strategic risks, said Mao Ning, a foreign ministry spokesperson on Monday.

Under the current circumstances, all sides need to focus on making diplomatic efforts towards a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine crisis and work together for de-escalation, she added.

Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, proposed a peace plan to end the crisis during a visit to Moscow last week, although it has been met with scepticism in the west as a possible stalling tactic to allow Russia to freeze the war and its territorial gains on its own terms.

Asked if the deployment of nuclear weapons in Belarus would complicate Chinas proposal, Ms Mao said Beijing was in talks with all sides and would continue to play a constructive role, urging the US to help create the conditions for peace talks rather than add fuel to the fire.

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Ukraine-Russia war latest: Russia claims to have shot down US ... - The Telegraph

Leonid Volkov, the chief of staff of , is visiting Australia this week to meet with senior foreign affairs officials and representatives of Foreign Minister Penny Wong to push his message that only sustained economic, military and political pressure on Russia would put enough strain on Putin that he would make a mistake.

Russian opposition figure Leonid Volkov is in Australia to talk to politicians and the media. Simon Schluter

Putin equals the war, Volkov told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Putin will not, and cant, stop. He cant admit he lost; he cant admit he was wrong.

The military burden of the opposition to Putin was being shouldered by the Ukrainian people, Volkov said, and the global sanctions regime was hitting the Russian economy and causing pain to both its citizens and its oligarchs.

The job of imposing political pressure was being done by organisations such as Navalnys Anti-Corruption Foundation.

There is no silver bullet, but what we really need is patience, and everyone has to do their job, Volkov said. We have to work with public opinion in Russia to decrease the support for the war to make it harder for Putin to mobilise more men.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus.

Volkov said it was impossible to accurately gauge public sentiment in Russia towards the war because state TV was a propaganda machine, dissent had been criminalised and Putin had encouraged political apathy among ordinary people for so long.

However, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, now based in exile in Vilnius, Lithuania, was trying to measure the level of support for the war by using indirect questions in polling.

We asked the question, Imagine there is additional money in the Russian budget, how would you like to spend it? Less than 10 per cent are in favour of additional military spending, despite the fact that propaganda is telling them 24 hours a day ... We are at war against the evil NATO, and we have to invest everything we have in defeating NATO.

So ... we can actually figure out that, well, there is no such thing as a popular support for the war there, Volkov said.

Putin had also lost the support of the elites, he claimed.

Theyve lost everything. Their lifestyle is ruined. No more kids in London, no more ski vacations ... and he doesnt present them with an exit strategy. They are asking him, Whats next? Whats the end game? and there is no answer. And they are getting more and more angry.

On calls for sporting bodies to prevent Russian athletes from competing in international events, Volkov said bans did have some impact on Russian society, but that Putin had also tried to weaponise them as an example of Western discrimination.

Ukraines sports minister recently renewed a threat to boycott the Olympic Games in Paris next year if Russia and Belarus were allowed to compete, and the sports ministers of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland and sporting organisations to ban athletes from those countries. But the IOC held firm, saying Russians and Belarusians could compete under neutral status if they were not actively supporting the war.

Vladimir Putin on a recent visit to Mariupol in Russian-controlled Donetsk, Ukraine. Russian TV

Volkov said that individual athletes who condemned the war, and make clear statements against the war, should be allowed to participate, but only under a neutral flag.

The good news, said Volkov, was that the war and the criminal warrant for Putins arrest issued by The Hague this month were likely to hasten the presidents demise.

Its a black swan event for him, Volkov said. Until the invasion, the most probable scenario was he would remain in power for 20 more years, until he dies.

Now the probability for this scenario ... has decreased dramatically.

Once Putin was off the scene, there was no reason Russia could not become a democracy, Volkov said.

There is no such thing as a nation thats incapable [of democracy].

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Putins death would end Ukraine war, says Russian opposition figure - Sydney Morning Herald