BREAKING: RUSSIA RETURNS 563 BODIES OF WAR SOLDIERS TO UKRAINE

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On Friday, Ukraine announced that Russian authorities had sent it the bodies of 563 servicemen, the majority of whom had been killed in fighting in the eastern Donetsk province.

Since Russia’s invasion in 2022, one of the rare areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv has been the handover of captives and the bodies of slain military soldiers.

“The bodies of 563 fallen Ukrainian defenders were returned to Ukraine,” the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in a statement on social media.

The announcement represents one of the largest repatriations of killed Ukrainian servicemen since the beginning of the war.

According to the statement, 89 of the soldiers were killed close to Bakhmut, a town that Russia took in May of last year following an expensive war, and 320 of the remains were returned from the Donetsk region.

The announcement also stated that 154 more bodies had been recovered from Russian mortuaries.

The number of military troops killed in combat has not been made public by Russia or Ukraine.

AFP