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November 8, 2024 – 17:39
Ukrainian authorities announced on Friday that Russia handed over the bodies of 563 soldiers, killed in the war between both countries, without specifying whether it was an exchange.
Some «320 bodies of defenders killed in the Donetsk sector and 89 soldiers fallen in the Bakhmut sector were repatriated. “We have also managed to repatriate 154 bodies from morgues in Russia,” said the Ukrainian coordination organization for prisoners of war.
According to this source, the operation was possible, in part, thanks to a collaboration between the Ukrainian emergency services, the army, the Ministry of the Interior, the parliamentary commissioner for human rights and the commission for missing persons.
This is one of the largest repatriations of bodies of dead Ukrainian soldiers since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine report the number of military losses, but the media and analysts estimate them at several tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of deaths in more than two and a half years of war.
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