The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia deliberately handed over to Ukraine the bodies of 20 members of the Russian armed forces instead of the remains of Ukrainian servicemen. This happened during the latest exchange of killed servicemen agreed upon between the two countries, Agence France-Presse reported, BTA reported.
Among the bodies handed over was the body of an Israeli citizen who fought as a mercenary for the Russian forces. The Ukrainian leader announced all this during a briefing given yesterday, which was under embargo until today.
He said that in some cases the bodies were accompanied by Russian passports and accused Moscow of lying by saying that it was only handing over the bodies of Ukrainians. During Ukrainian-Russian talks in Istanbul on June 2, Moscow and Kiev agreed to exchange the remains of soldiers from both sides.
On Monday, the Ukrainian Prisoners of War Coordination Center said that Ukraine had received 6,057 bodies as part of the deal, but expressed caution about the authenticity of the nationalities and status of the soldiers pending their identification.
On Friday, Zelensky hinted that Moscow might not be checking the identities of the bodies it had handed over to Kiev. “They don't even check what they are sending, because there are too many killed,” he said. But on the other hand, he said that Russia might be deliberately sending the bodies of soldiers who fought on its side to make people think that it had killed more Ukrainians and downplay its own losses. According to him, the Russians were afraid to admit how many soldiers they were losing, because when the time came for Putin to mobilize troops, his society would be scared. Zelensky added that Moscow wanted to “break the reality in which we live, in which many more people are dying“.
Neither the Russian nor the Ukrainian authorities have released official recent figures for the number of soldiers killed and wounded on the front. The casualties are believed to be in the tens of thousands on both sides, notes Agence France-Presse.
The repatriation of bodies, especially of soldiers, and the exchange of prisoners of war are the few areas in which Kiev and Moscow cooperate, the agency points out.
Yesterday, Zelensky assured, among other things, that 695,000 Russian soldiers are on Ukrainian territory, 20 percent of which is occupied by the Kremlin's army.