Russian officials stated on Sunday that Moscow is still waiting for formal confirmation from Kyiv regarding a planned exchange of 6,000 bodies of soldiers who died in action. This comes amid repeated claims that Ukraine has delayed the process.
According to Russian state media, Lt. Gen. Alexander Zorin, part of the Russian negotiation team, reported that Russia has already moved the first set of 1,212 bodies of Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers to the designated exchange site at the border. However, he mentioned there are signs suggesting the transfer process might be postponed until the following week, pending confirmation from Ukraine.
On Saturday, both Russia and Ukraine accused each other of hindering plans for this exchange of 6,000 soldiers’ bodies. The agreement for this swap was reached during direct discussions in Istanbul on Monday, a meeting which otherwise saw no advancements towards ending the conflict.
Vladimir Medinsky, a Putin aide who led the Russian delegation, said that Kyiv called a last-minute halt to an imminent swap. In a Telegram post Saturday, Medinsky 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 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 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, one person was killed and another seriously wounded in Russian aerial strikes on the eastern Ukrainian Kharkiv region. These strikes came after Russian attacks targeting the regional capital, also called Kharkiv, killed at least four people and wounded more than two dozen others on Saturday.
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.
Meanwhile, Russia’s defense ministry said that its forces shot down 61 Ukrainian drones overnight, including near the capital.
Two people were wounded when a Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire at a chemical plant in the Tula region.
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