Russia has announced that it will soon send trains carrying the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers, which were due to depart toward the Ukrainian border, escalating a spat with Kyiv over a prisoner of war swap, CNN reported.
“I can tell you that in just an hour, repatriation trains carrying the bodies of military personnel will also begin to move,” Russia’s Lieutenant General Alexander Zorin said on Sunday.
However, the process has been marred by controversy, with Russia accusing Ukraine of failing to confirm receipt of bodies that Russia claims to have moved to an exchange area near Novaya Guta, Belarus, on Saturday, as per CNN.
Zorin said that the transfer of “more than 6,000 bodies” was agreed upon earlier this week during peace talks in Istanbul.
According to CNN, Ukraine has firmly rejected these accusations, with Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukrainian Defence Intelligence, stating that his country has strictly adhered to the agreements reached in Istanbul.
Budanov said that the start of “repatriation measures” was scheduled for next week, which he claims the Russian side was told on Tuesday. “Everything is going according to plan,” he said.
A planned exchange of prisoners of war between Russia and Ukraine did not take place on Saturday. Russia claims that Ukraine postponed the swap at the last minute. However, Ukrainian officials deny this, citing “dirty information games” from the Kremlin.
Despite three years of fighting, such exchanges have been commonplace throughout the conflict, and the swap was the only concrete outcome of the talks in Istanbul this week.
Russia said Ukraine unexpectedly postponed a transfer involving prisoners of war and the bodies of dead soldiers on Saturday, leaving hundreds of Ukrainian bodies waiting in refrigerated trucks at an exchange point with no one to collect them.
Ukraine rejected Russia’s account of the events, saying that the two sides had agreed to exchange seriously wounded and young troops on Saturday but a date had not yet been set for the repatriation of soldiers’ bodies.
Earlier, during a second round of direct peace talks in Istanbul, Russia and Ukraine agreed to exchange more prisoners this weekend. Vladimir Medinsky, the head of Russia’s delegation for peace talks with Ukraine, said this week that the exchange would be the largest since the start of the three-year war. (ANI)
