Ukraine receives bodies of over 1,200 fallen servicemembers from Russia

Ukraine has repatriated the bodies of 1,212 servicemembers who were killed in its ongoing war with Russia, Kyiv announced on Wednesday. 

The return was coordinated by Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War and included the remains of personnel who died in the Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions, as well as in Russia’s Kursk region.

The International Committee of the Red Cross facilitated the handover, according to the Ukrainian side.

Authorities said investigators and forensic experts are working to establish the identities of the fallen, and that families of the deceased would be notified as soon as possible.

The transfer of bodies follows an agreement reached during the second round of Ukraine-Russia negotiations held in Istanbul on 2 June, where both sides consented to a new exchange of prisoners and war dead.

Russia claimed it had delivered the bodies to the border on 7 June as scheduled, but Ukrainian officials said Kyiv had not agreed on a final date for the exchange and therefore did not receive them at that time.

The return of the remains marks one of the largest such exchanges between the two countries since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.