Russian officials said on Sunday that Moscow is still waiting for the official confirmation from Kiev to hand over the bodies of 6,000 soldiers killed in the war to each other. With this, Russia reiterated its allegation that Ukraine has postponed the process.
Regarding the war front, Russia said that it has moved forward in the Dnipropatrovsk region of Ukraine. Russia’s government media quoted the Russian negotiator group representative Lieutenant General Alexander Jorin as saying that Russia has sent 1,212 bodies of Ukrainian armed forces soldiers at the exchange site on the border and is waiting for confirmation from Ukrainian authorities.
Jorin said that such ‘signs’ have been found that the process of handing over the bodies will be postponed by next week. Russia and Ukraine on Saturday accused each other of putting a plan to swap the bodies of 6,000 soldiers killed in the war, which agreed to face-to-face in Istanbul on Monday.
However, there was no progress towards ending the war in this dialogue. Citing Jorin on her Telegram channel, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Jakharova asked whether it was the personal decision of Ukrainian President Volodimir Jailonsky whether the bodies of Ukrainians should not be taken or “None of the NATO countries had banned it.”
Vladimir Medinski, an associate of Putin, who led the Russian delegation, said Kiev stopped the process of handing over the bodies at the last minute. Medinski said in a telegram post on Saturday that the ‘refrigerated’ trucks carrying more than 1,200 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers from Russia have already reached the site fixed by consent on the border. In response, Ukraine said that Russia is playing ‘dirty game’ and manipulating the facts.
