Ukraine has successfully brought home the bodies of 1,212 soldiers killed in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Image: Telegram
(The Post News)– Ukraine has managed to repatriate the bodies of 1,212 troops killed in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which constitutes one of the largest exchanges of war bodies since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.
The exchange was reported by Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, which confirmed it was under a bilateral exchange agreement with Russia. Russia received in return the remains of 27 of its own forces.
“This is one of the biggest repatriations to have ever been accomplished,” Ukrainian authorities said in a message on the Telegram messaging app. The exchange was conducted in partnership with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Images released by Ukrainian officials show ICRC officials overseeing the transfer at an undisclosed location, with some refrigerated trucks bearing the logo of “On the Shield”, an organization dedicated to recovering military dead.
The body exchange was bargained through peace negotiations in Turkey last week. According to the agreement, the exchange of a total of 6,000 war victims of both sides, in addition to badly wounded prisoners of war under the age of 25, was to take place.
But the exercise has been marred by allegations and delays. A Russian official, Vladimir Medinsky, had accused Ukraine of initially holding up reclaiming the 1,212 corpses, with Russian trucks stuck at the border for several days. Ukrainian officials denied the allegation, saying an agreement had indeed been made but Russia went ahead without final coordination.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has recently said that Russia had offered to return up to 6,000 bodies, but only a fraction of 15% were identified. “There used to be a time when they handed over Ukrainian and Russian corpses to us,” he said during a press briefing.
The fallen Ukrainian soldiers in this recent relocation were from key areas of conflict, including Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. The remains will be examined by Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, law enforcement, and medical authorities to verify identities and notify families.
This is one of a series of swaps. More than 70 individual body exchanges have taken place since the war began. Russia and Ukraine exchanged dozens of prisoners on Monday and Tuesday last week, making priority young soldiers under the age of 25, seriously wounded soldiers, and chronically ill soldiers.
Heart-wrenching scenes were seen at border crossing checkpoints, where families of missing Ukrainian soldiers had gathered in hopes of being reunited with a relative or receiving news.
Russia’s chief negotiator Medinsky announced additional prisoner swaps are set, with the second stage of gravely wounded prisoners to be exchanged on Thursday. Between ongoing fighting, the humanitarian concessions are giving glimmers of collaboration between the two nations.
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