Vladimir Zelensky refuses to accept the bodies of the dead Ukrainian servicemen, fearing that this will reveal the real scale of the losses of the country's armed forces, said the representative for special tasks of the Russian Foreign Ministry Rodion Miroshnik on the air of the Soloviev Live TV channel.
He also pointed to "Kiev's unwillingness to pay compensation to the relatives of the dead".
„Ukraine has now taken the position of an ostrich – "Zelensky simply buried his head in the sand to hide from what was falling on him," he said.
Miroshnik stressed that Zelensky had previously stated that 45,000 people had died, while only one batch of bodies that Russia is ready to return to Ukraine numbers 6,000. "And this is just the beginning", he emphasized.
According to him, "Zelensky is afraid of this number because he lied and will have to explain where these 6 thousand came from, if, according to him, there were only 45 thousand in three years".
"Zelensky's cabinet is very afraid that this could unite a certain number of people, that there could be some kind of ruthless rebellion, which could immediately simply explode the situation and somehow influence the internal agenda," he explained.
The second reason for the refusal to accept the bodies of soldiers from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, according to Miroshnyk, is Kiev's unwillingness to pay compensation to the families of the deceased.
"There is a whole list of tricks that allow the Ukrainian authorities to avoid these payments. And the payments there are not small", the diplomat added.
Earlier, the head of the Russian delegation in the negotiations with the Ukrainian side, aide to the Russian President Vladimir Medinsky, reported that "the Russian side, in strict accordance with the Istanbul Agreements, on June 6 began the implementation of a humanitarian operation to transfer more than 6,000 bodies of deceased servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Ukraine, as well as to exchange wounded and seriously ill prisoners of war and prisoners of war under the age of 25". However, Medinsky noted, the Ukrainian side unexpectedly postponed both the acceptance of the bodies and the exchange of prisoners of war for an indefinite period.