MOSCOW/KYIV, Dec 19 (Reuters) – Ukraine and Russia have carried out a new exchange of bodies of dead soldiers, Ukrainian and Russian officials said on Friday.
Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky said Russia had handed over to Ukraine the remains of 1,000 Ukrainian servicemen and had received the bodies of 26 Russian soldiers from Kyiv.
Ukrainian officials confirmed that Kyiv had received 1,003 bodies of killed servicemen from Russia. They said that investigators and experts would work to conduct all necessary examinations and identify them.
Ukraine’s prisoner-of-war coordination center posted on the Telegram app pictures of several large trucks and people in protective overalls checking bodies in white sacks.
Since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Kyiv and Moscow have conducted regular exchanges of the bodies of the killed servicemen.
Authorities in both countries have been generally tight-lipped about the overall numbers of soldiers killed and wounded.
(Reporting by Reuters, Writing by Anastasia Teterevleva, Olena Harmash, Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
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