Ukraine and Russia have completed an exchange of dead bodies – the final stage of a deal to bring home fallen soldiers.
Kyiv said Moscow handed over 1,245 bodies on Monday, bringing the total to 6,057 in the past few days. It said it was now verifying whether all the bodies were indeed of Ukrainian soldiers.
Russia put 6,060 the overall number of bodies transferred to Ukraine. It also said 78 bodies of Russian soldiers had been repatriated.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko accused Russia of “deliberately complicating” the identification process. “Bodies are returned in an extremely mutilated state, parts of [the same] bodies are in different bags,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The latest exchange took place at an undisclosed location on Monday. The bodies in white bags were brought in refrigerator lorries.
Red Cross members monitored the process.
In a statement, Ukraine’s government agency co-ordinating the repatriation said that “another 1,245 bodies were returned to Ukraine”.
It said the identification process and “all the necessary examinations” would be carried out by Ukrainian law enforcement experts.
Meanwhile, the Russian defence ministry said in a statement that 1,248 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers had been handed over to Kyiv.
That figure was questioned by Klymenko, who said that Ukraine had “received bodies of Russian soldiers mixed with those of Ukrainians” during the earlier exchanges.
In its statement, the Russian defence ministry also said it had received the bodies of 51 killed Russian soldiers on Monday, taking the total to 78.
The ministry added it was ready to hand over another 2,239 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.
The overall disparity between the two sides may be due to the fact that, of late, Russia has been making territorial gains, so would have been able to recover many of its own soldiers killed in fighting.
Trust between the two sides is extremely low, even when it comes to the dead.
The Red Cross declined to say how many bodies had been handed over by each side.
“It’s been up to them really to figure out the details, to discuss directly and determine where this takes place, when, and which human remains to be part of that process,” ICRC spokesman Pat Griffiths told the BBC.
The deal to repatriate the bodies and also exchange prisoners of war was agreed at peace talks between Ukraine and Russia in Istanbul, Turkey, earlier this month.
