Russia awaits Ukraine's confirmation on planned exchange of dead fighters
MOSCOW, June 9, (AP): Russian officials said Sunday that Moscow is still awaiting official confirmation from Ukraine that a planned exchange of 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action will take place, reiterating allegations that Kyiv had postponed the swap. On the front line in the war, Russia said that it had pushed into Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region.
Russian state media quoted Lt Gen Alexander Zorin, a representative of the Russian negotiating group, as saying that Russia delivered the first batch of 1,212 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers to the exchange site at the border and is waiting for confirmation from Ukraine, but that there were "signals' that the process of transferring the bodies would be postponed until next week.
Citing Zorin on her Telegram channel, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova asked whether it was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's "personal decision not to take the bodies of the Ukrainians' or whether "someone from NATO prohibited it." Ukrainian authorities said plans agreed upon during direct talks in Istanbul on Monday were proceeding accordingly, despite what Ukraine's intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, called Russian attempts to "unilaterally dictate the parameters of the exchange process.'
"We are carefully adhering to the agreements reached in Istanbul. Who, when and how to exchange should not be someone's sole decision. Careful preparation is ongoing. Pressure and manipulation are unacceptable here,' he said in a statement on Telegram on Sunday. "The start of repatriation activities based on the results of the negotiations in Istanbul is scheduled for next week, as authorized persons were informed about on Tuesday,' the statement said.
"Everything is moving according to plan, despite the enemy's dirty information game.' Russia and Ukraine each accused the other on Saturday of endangering plans to swap 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action, which was agreed upon during the talks in Istanbul, which otherwise made no progress toward ending the war. Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, led the Russian delegation. Medinsky said that Kyiv called a last-minute halt to an imminent swap.
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