Ukraine repatriates 1,212 fallen soldiers' bodies from Russia after Istanbul talks
Ukraine brought home the bodies of 1,212 soldiers killed in the war with Russia, the Kyiv officials responsible for exchanging prisoners of war said on Wednesday.
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'As a result of the repatriation activities …, the bodies of 1,212 fallen defenders have been returned to Ukraine,' the prisoner exchange coordination committee said on the Telegram messaging app.
It released photos from the scene showing personnel of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) at an undisclosed location, walking past several refrigerated trucks.
Some trucks were marked with emblems of 'On the Shield', a Ukrainian organisation involved in the retrieval and evacuation of military dead.
The soldiers died in battles in Russia's Kursk region and the Ukrainian regions of Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, the agency said.
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Kyiv and Moscow reached agreement at their most recent round of talks last week on a large-scale exchange of corpses of war dead, though the deal was marred by wrangling over its implementation.
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