‘1000 bodies': Vladimir Putin's grim gesture as invasion of Ukraine continues to rage

News.com.au

a day ago

Russia has given Ukraine the bodies of a thousand slain soldiers in a small, grim gesture of good faith, living up to at least part of an agreement struck during negotiations last month.
Delegations from the two countries met in Istanbul, Turkey, for a second round of talks, and while they failed to make any appreciable progress towards a genuine peace deal, they did at least agree to swap prisoners and return some of the fallen.
'Following the agreements reached in Istanbul, another 1000 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers were handed over to Ukraine today,' Russian representative Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to President Vladimir Putin, wrote on Telegram today, adding that Ukraine had in turn given Russia the bodies of 19 soldiers.
He shared photos of people in white medical outfits lifting body backs out of trucks.
According to the Russian state news agency RIA, the country plans to return the bodies of at least 3000 Ukrainian soldiers, and this was merely the first step in that process.
The figures involved here represent a mere fraction of the dead on both sides.
The Ukrainian and Russian teams have met only twice so far, but prisoner exchanges and the repatriation of remains have taken place regularly throughout the war.
That has little bearing on the chances of a peace deal being reached.
At last month's talks in Istanbul, Russia unveiled a list of hardline demands, which would have seen Ukraine cede even more territory to Putin's regime.
The Russians also wanted Ukraine to leave itself without military support from the West – something that would leave it vulnerable to further aggression in the future.
Ukraine, which says it cannot accept any peace deal without its future security being guaranteed, dismissed the demands as unacceptable, and questioned the point of holding more negotiations unless Russia would be willing to make concessions.
Putin has rejected calls for a ceasefire and escalated his military's strikes on Ukraine in recent weeks, defying US President Donald Trump, who this week ran out of patience.
Mr Trump declared he was 'very unhappy' with Putin, and was setting a 50-day deadline for Russia to reach a ceasefire deal. Fail to do so, he said, and it will face ruinous sanctions.
The American President also said he would be sending more weapons to help Ukraine in its fight against the invasion.
'I'm disappointed in him, but I'm not done with him. But I'm disappointed in him,' Mr Trump said of Putin.
Pressed on how he planned to stop the bloodshed, he offered little detail.
'We're working it,' he said.
'We'll have a great conversation. I'll say, 'That's good, I think we're close to getting it done.' And then he'll knock down a building in Kyiv.'
Mr Trump has told versions of that anecdote repeatedly throughout the week, indicating his frustration with Putin for telling him one thing on the phone, only to turn around and continue the violence hours later.
Mr Trump, who once branded NATO 'obsolete,' acknowledged that his view on the trans-Atlantic alliance has now shifted.
He reaffirmed his support for the alliance's collective defence principle, arguing it helps smaller nations protect themselves against larger threats.
'We're going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days,' he said.
Russia did not immediately respond to Mr Trump's shift in stance.
'President Trump's statement is very serious. We certainly need time to analyse what was said in Washington,' Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow.
'We maintain our readiness. It seems that such a decision made in Washington and in NATO countries and directly in Brussels will be perceived by Kyiv not as a signal for peace but for the continuation of the war.'
Drone attacks persist
Meanwhile, the fighting continues.
Ukraine and Russia traded drone strikes throughout Wednesday night, their time, in attacks that killed and wounded people on either side of the front line.
Russia's strikes have been a daily occurrence since Putin launched his invasion in February, 2022. Ukraine's capacity to hit back has steadily increased, to the point where it is now often able to reach targets across the border, inside Russia.
Russia's defence ministry said its air defences shot down 122 Ukrainian drones overnight, most of them in border regions.
In the Belgorod border region, 'a woman was killed when an explosive device was dropped from a drone onto a private house', Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram.
He said three civilians had been killed a day earlier.
And in the Voronezh region, which also borders Ukraine, three teenagers were wounded when falling drone debris struck a building, regional governor Alexander Gusev said.
Russia's strikes on Ukraine overnight killed one person in the central city of Dnipro, Governor Sergiy Lysak said.
Russia launched 64 drones, mostly targeting the central Dnipropetrovsk region, which includes Dnipro, according to Ukraine's air force.
It said it had shot down or disabled 41 of them.
That was actually down on recent nights, where hundreds of self-exploding attack drones have been fired at the country.
Ukraine also said three people were killed and at least 27 wounded in a Russian airstrike on the frontline town of Dobropillia a day earlier.