Russia and Ukraine have exchanged the bodies of 1,029 soldiers killed in combat, Kremlin adviser and chief peace negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said Friday.
Russia returned the bodies of 1,003 Ukrainian soldiers and received the remains of 26 Russian soldiers under a deal reached during peace talks in Istanbul in June, Medinsky said.
He shared two photographs on his Telegram channel of people in white hazmat suits gathered around refrigerated trucks.
Ukraine’s headquarters for the treatment of prisoners of war said it received 1,003 bodies, and added that law enforcement investigators planned to examine and identify them.
The Ukrainian headquarters said the Red Cross helped with repatriating the bodies.
As of November, Ukraine had received at least 15,000 repatriated bodies from Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion, according to publicly available information.
The repatriation of fallen soldiers and the exchange of prisoners of war have been one of the few areas of cooperation between the two sides since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Moscow and Kyiv had agreed during talks in Istanbul to exchange the bodies of 6,000 soldiers each. The sides also agreed to a large-scale prisoner swap but failed to reach a ceasefire deal.
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