Russia awaits Ukraine's confirmation on a planned exchange of dead fighters, officials say
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.
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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.'
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 direct talks in Istanbul on Monday that 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. In a Telegram post on Saturday, he said that refrigerated trucks carrying more than 1,200 bodies of Ukrainian troops from Russia had already reached the agreed exchange site at the border when the news came.
In response, Ukraine said that Russia was playing 'dirty games' and manipulating facts.
According to the main Ukrainian authority dealing with such swaps, no date had been set for repatriating the bodies. In a statement on Saturday, the agency also accused Russia of submitting lists of prisoners of war for repatriation that didn't correspond to agreements reached on Monday.
It wasn't immediately possible to reconcile the conflicting claims.
In other developments, Russia's Defense Ministry said Sunday that its forces had reached the western edge of the Donetsk region, one of the four provinces Russia illegally annexed in 2022, and that troops were 'developing the offensive' in the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region. This would be the first time Russian troops had pushed into the region in the more than three-year-old war.
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Ukraine didn't immediately respond to the claim, and The Associated Press couldn't immediately verify it.
Russia's advance would mark a significant setback for Ukraine's already stretched forces as peace talks remain stalled and Russian troops have made incremental gains elsewhere.
One person was killed and another seriously wounded in Russian aerial strikes on the eastern Ukrainian Kharkiv region. These strikes came after Russian attacks targeted the regional capital, also called Kharkiv, on Saturday. Regional police in Kharkiv said on Sunday that the death toll from Saturday's attacks had increased to six people. More than two dozen others were wounded.
Russia fired a total of 49 exploding drones and decoys and three missiles overnight, Ukraine's air force said Sunday. Forty drones were shot down or electronically jammed.
Russia's defense ministry said that its forces shot down 61 Ukrainian drones overnight, including near the capital.
Five people were wounded Sunday in a Ukrainian drone attack on a parking lot in Russia's Belgorod region, according to regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov. Two people were wounded when a Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire at a chemical plant in the Tula region, local authorities said.
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Russian authorities said early Sunday that Vnukovo and Domodedovo airports, two international airports serving Moscow, temporarily suspended flights because of a Ukrainian drone attack. Later in the day, Domodedovo halted flights temporarily for a second time, along with Zhukovsky airport.
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Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukrain
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SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account 'We're not expecting anything; that's not our job to make those expectations,' Ambassador Pete Hoekstra said in an interview with The Canadian Press this past Friday, a day after NATO defence ministers endorsed new spending targets. Hoekstra also said the point of the NATO military alliance is to defend each other when under attack. He noted Americans haven't forgotten the 'investment and the sacrifice' Canadian troops made in Afghanistan when the U.S. invoked the NATO treaty's article on collective defence. 'They were fulfilling the commitment that they made to NATO _ that when one of us is attacked we are all attacked, and we will defend each other,' Hoekstra said of Canadian soldiers. 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