Kyiv announced that Russia had returned 1,000 bodies

Efforts to identify the repatriated bodies will be carried out “soon” by investigators and experts from Ukraine’s Interior Ministry.

Russia returned to Ukraine on Thursday, November 20, 1,000 bodies were presented as Ukrainian soldiers who died in battle, the Ukrainian government announced it was responsible for prisoners of war. “Today, repatriation measures were carried out. One thousand bodies, presented by the Russian side as Ukrainian soldiers, were returned to Ukraine”reported the Ukrainian Government Prisoner of War Center.

Work to identify the repatriated bodies will be carried out “quick” by investigators and experts from the Ministry of Home Affairs, he added. The final repatriation of bodies was carried out at the end of October and also involved 1,000 bodies. The new repatriation brings the number of bodies handed over by Russia to Ukraine to more than 15,000 since the start of this year. Ukraine, for its part, returned several hundred to Russia in the same period.

The exchange of bodies of slain soldiers and prisoners of war is the only outcome of negotiations between the two warring parties, more than three and a half years after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Last February, President Volodymyr Zelensky told an American television channel that his country had lost nearly 46,000 troops since 2022, a figure that analysts considered an underestimate, while “tens of thousands” others disappeared or were taken prisoner by Russian soldiers.