Reuters
[Source: Reuters]
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.
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