Kyiv says 1,245 bodies returned to Ukraine from Russia

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Russia has returned 1,245 bodies to Ukraine, Kyiv said on Monday, the final stage of a deal to repatriate more than 6,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers agreed at peace talks this month.

Russia and Ukraine reached an agreement on a large-scale exchange of prisoners and the bodies of killed soldiers -- the only visible result from two rounds of direct talks in the Turkish city of Istanbul.

"Another 1,245 bodies returned to Ukraine -- repatriation part of Istanbul agreements has been completed," the government agency coordinating the repatriation said.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov said on Facebook that Kyiv had received more than 6,000 bodies in total over the past week.

The Russian defence ministry gave a slightly different figure of 1,248 for the number of bodies returned in the final stage of the accord -- three more than Kyiv said it had received.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko on Monday accused Russia of "deliberately complicating the identification process".

"Bodies are returned in an extremely mutilated state, parts of (the same) bodies are in different bags," Klymenko said on Telegram.

Ukraine also "received bodies of Russian soldiers mixed with those of Ukrainians" during the previous stages of the repatriation last week, he added.

'Madness'

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that Moscow had offered Kyiv to swap captured Russian soldiers for Ukrainian children under its jurisdiction.

Kyiv says that hundreds of Ukrainian children were forcibly taken by Russia during its invasion and handed a list with the names of some of them to Moscow's delegation at the talks in Istanbul.

"Russians proposed this: we give them their soldiers, and they give us children," Zelensky told reporters in Vienna, without elaborating on the proposal.

"It is simply beyond comprehension and beyond international law, but it is in their spirit," he added, calling the idea "madness".

Moscow's defence ministry on Monday confirmed the latest handover of bodies, saying it had "fulfilled the agreement".

Russia also said it was ready to "hand over another 2,239 bodies of fallen servicemen".

Moscow said it had received the bodies of 51 dead Russian soldiers in return, taking the total number handed over by Ukraine in the latest exchanges to 78.

Kyiv initially said the two sides had agreed to "exchange" the bodies of 6,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers for as many Russians, though Moscow has always presented the deal as a unilateral decision to repatriate Ukrainians.

Tens of thousands of soldiers have been killed on both sides since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, according to independent monitors and Western intelligence agencies.

Neither side releases regular or reliable figures on the number of their own casualties but they do publish claims about the other side's losses that are widely seen as inflated.