Ukraine has brought home the bodies of 1,212 soldiers killed in the war with Russia, the Kyiv officials responsible for exchanging prisoners of war said on Wednesday.
In Moscow, Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky said Ukraine for its part had returned 27 bodies of Russian soldiers.
“As a result of the repatriation activities ... the bodies of 1,212 fallen defenders have been returned to Ukraine,” Kyiv’s prisoner exchange co-ordination committee said on the Telegram messaging app.
It released photographs from the scene showing personnel of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) at an undisclosed location, walking past several refrigerated trucks.
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Some trucks were marked with emblems of “On the Shield,” a Ukrainian organisation involved in the retrieval and evacuation of military dead.
Kyiv and Moscow reached an agreement at their most recent round of talks last week on a large-scale exchange of war dead, though the deal was marred by wrangling over its implementation.
On Sunday, Mr Medinsky said Ukraine had postponed taking the first 1,212 bodies. Russian officials also said that refrigerated trucks loaded with corpses waited for five days at the border before Ukraine accepted them.
Ukraine’s co-ordination agency said a deal had been reached on repatriating bodies, but the date had not been finalised and accused Russia of unilateral and uncoordinated actions.
On June 2nd, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia wanted to transfer 6,000 bodies back to Ukraine, but that only about 15 per cent of them had been identified.
“We already had a moment once when they transferred bodies to us and were also transferring bodies of Russian dead soldiers,” said Mr Zelenskiy.
The 1,212 bodies will now be transferred to experts of Ukraine’s interior ministry, law enforcement agencies and the health ministry who will try to ascertain their identities as soon as possible, said the prisoner exchange co-ordination agency.
On Monday, Russia and Ukraine exchanged dozens of prisoners of war under the age of 25, as well as severely wounded and ill prisoners on Tuesday, in emotional homecoming scenes, the first step in a series of planned swaps that could become the biggest of the war triggered by Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Russia and Ukraine will exchange more seriously wounded and ill prisoners of war on Thursday, said Mr Medinsky.
Fighting has raged on, meanwhile, with Russia saying on Monday its forces had taken control of more territory in Ukraine’s east-central region of Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv saying Moscow had launched its largest drone attack of the war.
Russian forces launched a new drone assault across Ukraine overnight on Wednesday, killing three people and wounding 64 others, said Ukrainian officials.
One of the hardest-hit areas was the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, where 17 attack drones struck two residential districts, said mayor Ihor Terekhov. – Reuters
