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Ukraine Receives Another 1,200 Bodies From Russia As War Rages On
Russia 15 returned another 1,200 bodies it says belong to Ukrainians killed in the war, Ukrainian authorities said, while fighting continued and Russia claimed it seized control of a village in the Donetsk region.
The repatriations are being conducted following two rounds of direct peace talks in Istanbul that produced agreements on the return of prisoners and the bodies of the dead but brought no visible progress on ending Russia's war against Ukraine.
They come ahead of a summit of the Group of Seven (G7) nations in Alberta, Canada, which Kyiv hopes will yield tighter Western sanctions against Moscow, including a lower price cap on Russian oil exports.
"Another 1,200 bodies that the Russian side claims belong to Ukrainian citizens, among them soldiers, have been returned to Ukraine," Ukraine'sCoordination Headquartersfor the Treatment of Prisoners of War said on Telegram on June 15.
The authorities will work to identify the bodies, it said.
The development brought the total number of bodies sent from Russia to Ukraine to 4,012. Russia reported receiving a total of 27 Russian servicemen from Ukraine so far.
According to Russian state media citing unnamed sources, Moscow received no bodies in the June 15 transaction.
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Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war and the remains of citizens several times since the talks in Istanbul, on May 16 and June 2, but Moscow has rejected calls by Kyiv and the West for a cease-fire and the fighting persists nearly 40 months after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
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Russia and Ukraine also exchanged prisoners several times before the Istanbul talks, with little or no impact on the level of hostilities.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on June 15 that Russian forces had taken control of Malynivka, a village in the Donetsk region, where some of the fiercest fighting has taken place. Russia is seeking to occupy the whole of Donetsk, one of four regions on mainland Ukraine that Putin baselessly claims are part of Russia.
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The ministry also said its forces had conducted a successful missile attack overnight on a refinery in the city of Kremenchuk that it said supplies fuel to Ukrainian forces in the Donetsk region. It did not provide details, and Russia's claims could not be verified.
In addition, the ministry said Russian air defense had downed 128 Ukrainian drones and two guided missiles over the previous 24 hours.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, said Russia had launched at least 183 attack drones and 11 missiles overnight, and that Ukraine's air defenses had destroyed 167 of the projectiles. "The strike mainly targeted the Poltava region, particularly Kremenchuk,"he saidon social media.
"Moscow has been doing this for four years now and is constantly increasing the number of strikes. That is why it is so important for all decisions on tightening sanctions against Russia to be made in the coming weeks," Zelenskyy said.
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"We need price caps that will stop this war. We need sanctions against Russian banks and the financial sector that will truly hit hard. We must also combat sanctions evasion schemes," he said. "The United States, the European Union, and theG7 countrieshave the power to make this happen."
Leaders were heading to Kananaskis in the Canadian Rockies for the June 15-17 summit of the G7 -- the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Canada, and Japan -- which may now be dominated by the heavy fighting between Israel and Iran.
European Union officials hope the G7 countries will agree at the summit to new sanctions against Russia including a bid to curtail its oil revenues by lowering the price cap on Russian crude to $45 per barrel from the current $60.
Zelenskyy plans to attend and to meet with US President Donald Trump, who has been seeking to broker an end to Russia's war on Ukraine since he started his second term in January and is also trying to improve relations with the Kremlin.
While bilateral meetings between leaders are possible on June 15, the official summit program begins on June 16.
Trump has threatened to impose additional sanctions on Russia if he determines that Moscow does not want peace, but he has yet to take that step and has said he might also punish Ukraine if the sides don't make progress toward peace soon.
After a phone call on June 14,Trump saidin a post on his Truth Social platform that Putin feels, as I do, this war in Israel-Iran should end, to which I explained, his war should also end.
With reporting by Reuters and AP
