Russia made the bodies of 757 Ukrainian soldiers, says kyiv

The exchange of remains of soldiers and prisoners of war is one of the last areas of cooperation between Moscow and kyiv.

This is the most important return of this type since the start of the invasion almost three years ago. Ukraine announced, Friday, January 24, having received from Russia the bodies of 757 of its soldiers killed in the fighting. The exchange of remains of soldiers and prisoners of war is one of the last areas of cooperation between Moscow and kyiv since the triggering of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

According to the Coordination Center for the treatment of prisoners of war, the vast majority of remains have been brought back from the eastern Donetsk region, where the most fierce fights take place, especially around the mining city of Pokrovsk. The surroundings of the city of Donetsk alone represent 451 repatriated bodies.

About 130 of the remains come from the Zaporijjia area, where Russia has intensified its attacks in recent months. This reinforcement makes Ukraine fears a Russian offensive in this direction, kyiv’s troops being already struggling on the eastern front. Thirty-four other remains have no identified areas and come from “Different Russian morgues”according to the Ukrainian center.

Last December, Ukraine announced that it had received the bodies of 503 of its soldiers who fell in battle. In October, 501 other remains were repatriated, according to kyiv. The number of soldiers killed since the start of the conflict remains difficult to determine with precision, each camp that is reluctant to communicate on its own losses and largely inflating the losses of the other.

In December, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and 370,000 wounded since the Russian invasion of 2022, a balance sheet that could be undervalued, according to observers. For its part, Russia, which does not communicate its losses in Ukraine, also does not state the return of the remains of its soldiers.