Kiev could receive an additional 2,239 bodies, the Russian defense ministry has said
Russia is ready to hand over more remains of fallen troops to Ukraine, in addition to making good on its earlier promise to send some 6,000 bodies to Kiev’s military, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.
During talks in Istanbul in early June, Russia unilaterally decided to repatriate the bodies of 6,060 slain Ukrainian troops as a humanitarian gesture. On Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that the final batch of remains had been handed over to Kiev, and that Moscow had “fulfilled the agreements” reached during the talks in Türkiye.
However, the ministry made it clear that it presently holds some 2,000 more remains. “At this stage, we are ready to hand over another 2,239 bodies of the deceased servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to the Ukrainian side,” a statement released on Monday claimed.
Moscow transferred 1,248 bodies in an exchange on Monday during which it received from Ukraine the remains of 51 slain Russian servicemen, it said.
Russia has this received some 76 bodies from Ukraine, having repatriated some 6,000 to Kiev.
Russia initially tried to return the remains over the previous weekend, but Ukraine’s representatives failed to show up at the exchange point on the border between Belarus and Ukraine. Kiev later claimed that it had not agreed on the date of the transfer and accused Moscow of “using humanitarian issues for information purposes.”
At the time, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova branded Ukraine’s failure to receive the bodies of its fallen soldiers “genocide against its own people.” The deliberate inaction of Vladimir Zelensky’s government was proof that it “does not need its people; neither dead nor alive,” she argued.
Kiev eventually began to accept the bodies from Moscow on Wednesday, with several transfers taking place since then.
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