Ukraine says Russia has returned bodies of 1,212 fallen soldiers

A POW walks past portraits of missing or captured serviceman during the arrival of freed injured and severely wounded Ukrainian POWs in the Chernygiv region after a prisoners exchange on June 10, 2025, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine said on Wednesday that Russia had returned the bodies of 1,212 soldiers who died fighting Moscow's invasion, part of an agreement between the two sides reached at peace talks in Istanbul last week.

"As a result of repatriation activities, the bodies of 1,212 fallen defenders were returned to Ukraine," a government agency said in a statement, after Moscow spent days accusing Kyiv of not wanting to collect the bodies.

On Tuesday, the two warring countries said they had exchanged captured soldiers, the second stage of an agreement struck at peace talks last week for each side to free more than 1,000 prisoners.

Neither side said how many soldiers had been freed in the swap -- the second in as many days following another exchange on Monday. The two sides had agreed in Istanbul last week to release all wounded soldiers and all under the age of 25.

The agreement had appeared in jeopardy over the weekend, with both sides trading accusations of attempting to thwart the exchange.

Russia says Ukraine has still not agreed to collect the bodies of killed soldiers, after Moscow said more than 1,200 corpses were waiting in refrigerated trucks near the border.

Russia said it had agreed to hand over the remains of 6,000 killed Ukrainian soldiers, while Kyiv said it would be an "exchange".

Moscow and Kyiv have carried out dozens of prisoner exchanges since Russia invaded in 2022, triggering Europe's largest conflict since World War II.