Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on June 10, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
Russia is ready to return bodies of Ukrainian soldiers, with refrigerated trucks at the border, awaiting Kyiv's response.
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia has been ready to start handing over the corpses of Ukraine's war dead for several days with refrigerated trucks containing the first bodies parked near the border, but Kyiv is still discussing the details, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.
The two sides agreed to repatriate the bodies of soldiers killed in the conflict during talks in Istanbul on June 2, which also resulted in an agreement to exchange prisoners of war, a process which got under way on Monday.
Russia has said it is ready to hand over the bodies of over 6,000 Ukrainian soldiers and receive any bodies of Russian soldiers which Kyiv is able to return.
But Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky said on Saturday that the Russian side had shown up at the agreed exchange point with the bodies of 1,212 Ukrainian dead soldiers only to find nobody from Ukraine to take them.
Ukrainian officials responsible for the exchanges did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
Asked about the issue on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia remained ready to return the bodies and was in talks with Kyiv on the subject, but did not yet know exactly how many bodies of Russian soldiers Ukraine was ready to hand over.
"There is no final understanding. Contact is being made, numbers are being compared. As soon as there is a final understanding, then we hope this exchange will take place," said Peskov.
"There is one indisputable fact here, which is that we have already been ready on the border for several days with those trailers that were mentioned to make the transfer to the Ukrainian side. This is a fact that everyone sees and knows."
Russian state media has broadcast images of long white refrigerated trucks containing the bodies which are sealed in individual white bags and are parked up near the border.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accused Moscow of "trying to play some kind of dirty political and information game" around the issue and that of the wider prisoner exchange.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Andrew OsbornEditing by Guy Faulconbridge)
Russia has claimed it is ready to hand over the bodies of over 6,000 Ukrainian soldiers and has refrigerated trucks parked near the border for this purpose.
During the talks in Istanbul on June 2, both sides agreed to repatriate the bodies of soldiers killed in the conflict and to exchange prisoners of war.
Dmitry Peskov stated that Russia remains ready to return the bodies and is in talks with Kyiv, but there is no final understanding yet regarding the exchange.
Russia attempted to exchange 1,212 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers at the agreed exchange point but found no representatives from Ukraine present.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Moscow of trying to play a 'dirty political and information game' regarding the body transfer and prisoner exchange.
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