KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine received another 1,245 bodies of its soldiers killed in the war with Russia on Monday in the final stage of the repatriation of remains agreed at talks in Istanbul, Ukrainian officials said.
“Today marks the final stage of the repatriation of fallen soldiers,” Defence Minister Rustem Umerov said. “Since last week, when the implementation of the Istanbul agreements began, we have managed to bring back over 6,000 bodies.”
This marks one of the largest returns of war dead since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago.
The handover of the soldiers’ remains is part of the agreements reached between Russia and Ukraine during their second round of talks in Istanbul at the start of the month.
Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky, the head of Russia’s delegation at the peace talks, said that Moscow had handed back the bodies of 6,060 Ukrainian servicemen. He said that Russia has received the remains of 78 of its own soldiers in return.
Ukrainian officials said that they had received 6,057 bodies. They was no immediate explanation available on the discrepancy in numbers.
The Russian Defence ministry said that Moscow was ready to hand over another 2,239 bodies to Ukraine.
Both Ukraine and Russia said that the process of exchanging prisoners of war was still ongoing.
“We are not stopping. Ahead lies the next stage: we continue the fight to bring back our prisoners of war,” Ukrainian Defence Minister Umerov said in a social media post on Facebook.
The agreements on exchanging POWs were the only concrete result during the talks between Kyiv and Moscow in Istanbul. Both sides remain far apart in their vision on how to end the war, and they also failed to agree on a ceasefire.
(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa, Olena Harmash and Reuters in Moscow; Editing by Toby Chopra)
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