Kyiv announced on Friday that it had received the remains of 909 Ukrainian soldiers killed in battle with Russian forces, marking the largest repatriation of war casualties since the conflict began over three years ago.
Despite the ongoing hostilities, the exchange of fallen soldiers remains one of the few areas of cooperation between Ukraine and Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
“The bodies of 909 fallen Defenders were returned to Ukraine,” stated the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, a Ukrainian government agency.
The statement, shared on social media, also acknowledged international assistance in the process.
“We are grateful for the assistance of the International Committee of the Red Cross,” it added.
The remains were retrieved from multiple regions, including Donetsk, Lugansk, and Zaporizhzhia, areas that Moscow has declared part of Russia.
Some bodies were also returned from morgues inside Russian territory, likely those of soldiers who perished in Ukrainian operations in Russia’s Kursk region.
This repatriation is the latest in a series of large-scale returns, with at least seven instances of 500 or more Ukrainian bodies being repatriated since October 2024.
President Volodymyr Zelensky previously stated that over 46,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed, while more than 380,000 have sustained injuries.
On the Russian side, officials have not disclosed casualty figures or announced similar repatriations.
However, Russian sources reported that Moscow received the remains of just 43 of its fallen soldiers in the latest exchange.
