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 coordination committee said on the Telegram messaging app.
It released photos from the scene showing personnel of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) at an undisclosed location, walking past several refrigerated trucks.
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 agreement at their most recent round of talks last week on a large-scale exchange of corpses of war dead, though the deal was marred by wrangling over its implementation.
On Sunday, 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 coordination body 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 2, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Russia wanted to transfer 6,000 bodies back to Ukraine, but that only about 15% 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,” Zelenskiy said at a briefing.
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, the prisoner exchange coordination body said.
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.
