3 weeks ago
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The bodies of 1,212 Ukrainian soldiers person been returned from Russia, Kyiv says, arsenic portion of a captive speech statement betwixt the warring countries.
In instrumentality Russia received 27 bodies, Moscow's main negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said.
The captive speech woody was the lone tangible effect of bid talks successful Turkey past week, with some sides agreeing to manus implicit arsenic galore arsenic 6,000 dormant bodies each, arsenic good arsenic sick and heavy wounded prisoners of war, and those aged nether 25.
Medinsky announced that Russia would statesman exchanging "severely wounded prisoners" connected Thursday.
The dormant soldiers were from assorted regions of Ukraine, including Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine's co-ordination centre for the attraction of prisoners of warfare said connected Telegram.
The centre added it would "establish the identities of the deceased arsenic soon arsenic possible".
This is not the archetypal clip that dormant bodies person been repatriated successful this struggle - thousands person already been exchanged successful much than 70 abstracted repatriations.
This speech follows respective days of accusations from Moscow that Ukraine was failing to cod the bodies, which Medinsky said had been sitting successful refrigerated trucks astatine an speech constituent since Saturday.
Medinsky besides said connected Saturday that Ukraine had "unexpectedly postponed" the captive swaps. In response, Ukraine said that Russia was playing "dirty tricks" and manipulating the facts.
The archetypal circular of exchanges took spot connected Monday. There were affectional scenes arsenic the families of missing Ukrainian soldiers gathered adjacent the borderline with Belarus to property the returning prisoners for accusation astir their loved ones.
Soldiers connected some sides were exchanged that day, but neither Russia nor Ukraine gave an nonstop fig of however galore radical were swapped.
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