This is one of the largest repatriations of Ukrainian military remains since the start of the war. Ukraine announced this Friday, October 18, 2024, that it had repatriated the bodies of 501 of its soldiers killed in clashes with Russian forces, mainly in the east of its territory, where they have been advancing for months, reportsAFP.
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“Thanks to repatriation measures, 501 bodies of fallen Ukrainian defenders were returned to Ukraine,” the coordination center for the treatment of prisoners of war, a government agency, said on Telegram. Last August, kyiv was already able to recover the bodies of around 250 of its soldiers who died in combat in the towns of Bakhmout, Avidiivka and the Lugansk region in the east, as well as in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south.
The majority of bodies come from Avdiïvka
According to the coordination center, most of the 501 remains were brought back from the eastern region of Donetsk, more specifically from the area of Avdiivka, a mining town where 382 bodies came from, and which were seized last February by Moscow initiated the still ongoing Russian advance.
The agency praised the assistance of the International Committee of the Red Cross and noted that several state bodies and the army helped coordinate the return of the remains. Representatives of law enforcement agencies and forensic experts will now have to identify the victims, after which the bodies will be handed over to their relatives, the Ukrainian coordination center said.
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