Russia, Ukraine exchange bodies of deceased servicemen

Russia and Ukraine have conducted a new exchange of deceased servicemen's bodies.

State Duma member Shamsail Saraliev disclosed that the Russian side received 29 bodies, while Ukraine accepted 121 bodies of military personnel, as confirmed by the Ukrainian coordination headquarters for prisoner-of-war treatment.

"We were given 29 bodies of our dead soldiers," remarked Saraliev, who serves as a representative of the parliamentary coordination group on military operations, speaking to RBC.

The Ukrainian headquarters, in tandem, revealed that the return of bodies was facilitated through collaborative efforts involving the International Committee of the Red Cross, Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Security Service of Ukraine, and other relevant agencies. According to the headquarters, 107 deceased were repatriated from the Donetsk region, 12 bodies from Lugansk, and 2 from Zaporizhzhia.

The previous exchange occurred on March 15, during which Ukraine received 100 bodies while Russia repatriated 69 deceased military personnel.

In early March, Russian Commissioner for Human Rights, Tatyana Moskalkova, announced the conclusion of all necessary examinations on the bodies of 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war who perished in the crash of an Il-76 aircraft in the Belgorod region on January 24. Moskalkova affirmed Ukraine's readiness to accept the bodies, although it remains undisclosed whether the bodies of prisoners of war were included in the recent exchange.