Ukrainian officials in hazmat suits receive the remains of fallen Ukrainian soldiers at an undisclosed location, Ukraine, 16 June 2025. Photo: Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War
Moscow has handed over the remains of both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers to Kyiv as part of an agreed series of repatriations over the past two weeks, Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Monday.
“During the latest repatriations, the bodies of Russian soldiers were also handed over to us, mixed with the bodies of Ukrainians,” Klymenko wrote on his Telegram channel, adding that Russia may have done so intentionally to raise the number of bodies it transferred, or that it could simply be due to “their usual careless attitude towards their own people”.
Klymenko noted that Ukrainian forensic experts would work to identify all the human remains that they had received, but said that they were currently working at capacity, as the identification process was further complicated by the bodies being delivered “in an extremely disfigured condition”, with some remains kept in different bags.
“There were even cases when the remains of one person were returned at different stages of repatriation,” he added. The Russian Defence Ministry has yet to respond to Klymenko’s allegations.
Russia has now handed over 6,060 bodies, which it says are those of Ukrainian soldiers killed in the war, according to Vladimir Medinsky, the chief Russian negotiator at the Istanbul talks, where the agreement to exchange the remains of enemy servicemen was brokered on 2 June.
The latest transfer of remains took place earlier on Monday, with Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov confirming that Ukraine had now received over 6,000 bodies from Moscow. Monday’s transfer was “the last one in this format”, Umerov wrote, adding that “behind every one of them is a name, a life, a family waiting for answers.”
Umerov did not disclose the number of deceased Russian soldiers handed over to Moscow, while Medinsky said this figure stood at 78.