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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
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4 min read
Russia says it is sending more Ukrainian soldiers’ bodies to border
amid spat over prisoner swap
By Christian Edwards, Kosta Gak and Billy Stockwell, CNN
Updated:
3:59 PM EDT, Sun June 8, 2025
Source: CNN
Russia said Sunday that trains carrying more bodies of Ukrainian
soldiers were due to depart toward the Ukrainian border, escalating a
spat with Kyiv over a prisoner of war swap.
“I can tell you that in just an hour, repatriation trains carrying
the bodies of military personnel will also begin to move,” Russia’s
Lieutenant General Alexander Zorin said on Sunday, according to Russian
state news agency TASS.
The transfer of “more than 6,000 bodies” was agreed earlier this
week during peace talks in Istanbul, Zorin said, blaming Ukraine for
failing to “confirm receipt” of other bodies of Ukrainian soldiers
which Russia claims it moved to an exchange area near Novaya Guta,
Belarus on Saturday.
Kyiv firmly rejected the accusations, with Kyrylo Budanov, the head of
Ukrainian Defense Intelligence, saying that his country was strictly
adhering to the agreements reached at peace talks in Istanbul.
Budanov said that the start of “repatriation measures” was
scheduled to take place next week, which he claims the Russian side was
told on Tuesday. “Everything is going according to plan,” he said.
A planned exchange of and prisoners of war failed to take place on
Saturday, with Moscow accusing Kyiv of postponing the swap at the last
minute, something Ukrainian officials dismissed as “dirty information
games” from the Kremlin.
Despite three years of fighting such exchanges have been commonplace
throughout the conflict and the swap was the only concrete outcome of
the talks in Istanbul this week.
Russia said Ukraine unexpectedly postponed a transfer involving
prisoners of war and the bodies of dead soldiers on Saturday, leaving
hundreds of Ukrainian bodies waiting in refrigerated trucks at an
exchange point with no one to collect them.
Ukraine rejected Russia’s account of the events, saying that the two
sides had agreed to exchange seriously wounded and young troops on
Saturday but a date had not yet been set for the repatriation of
soldiers’ bodies.
During a second round of direct peace on Monday, Russia and Ukraine
agreed to exchange more prisoners this weekend. Vladimir Medinsky, the
head of Russia’s delegation for peace talks with Ukraine, said this
week that the exchange would be the largest since the start of the
three-year war.
“In strict accordance with the Istanbul agreements, the Russian side
began a humanitarian operation to transfer more than 6,000 bodies of
killed Ukrainian servicemen,” as well as badly wounded soldiers under
the age of 25, Medinsky said Saturday afternoon on Telegram.
He claimed that 1,212 bodies of killed Ukrainian soldiers were at the
exchange point, with the rest “on their way.” He also said that
Russia gave Ukraine the first list of 640 prisoners of war for
exchange, listed as “wounded, seriously ill and young people,” in
order to start the swap.
In a video posted by Russia’s Defense Ministry on Telegram, two men
wearing hazmat suits are seen opening the doors to the back of a truck
parked on the side of a road. Inside the truck were dozens of sealed
white bags, which the ministry said contained the bodies of Ukrainian
soldiers.
Medinsky said Russia’s Defense Ministry contact group was waiting at
the border with Ukraine, but alleged that Kyiv had “unexpectedly
postponed the transfer of bodies and the exchange of prisoners of war
for an indefinite period” and had given “pretty weird reasons”
for doing so.
Ukraine swiftly rejected the accusations, saying Medinsky’s claims
“do not correspond to reality.” It said the exchange of prisoners
of war and soldiers’ bodies were separate processes.
“Unfortunately, instead of constructive dialogue, we are again faced
with manipulations and attempts to use sensitive humanitarian issues
for informational purposes,” Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters
for the Treatment of Prisoners of War wrote on Telegram.
“We call on the Russian side to stop playing dirty games,” it
added.
On Saturday, Yevgeny Balitsky, the Moscow-installed governor of the
Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, published
a list of 97 names of Ukrainian Armed Forces servicemen whose bodies
were supposed to part of the transfer.
“We will begin to make public the lists of identified bodies so that
relatives can find their dead,” Balitsky said on Telegram.
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