Ukraine has said the practice of passing off the bodies of Russian soldiers as Ukrainian is part of an attempt to obscure the scale of its military losses from the Russian public.
Ukrainian authorities have confirmed that at least 20 of the bodies Russia returned as Ukrainian were actually Russian soldiers, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
"This is yet another proof of how Russia treats its people with contempt," Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.
"This could have been done by the Russians on purpose to increase the number of bodies transferred and to load our (forensic) experts with work, adding to all this cynical information pressure. Or it could be their usual negligent attitude toward their own people. In any case, we also identify these bodies," Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.
Law enforcement investigations and institutions from Ukraine’s Interior Ministry will examine and identify the bodies in the near future, the Coordinating Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said.
"If the Russian side is now backing away from what was promised in Istanbul, it raises serious questions about the reliability and capability of their negotiating team," Ukraine's Defense Ministry said on June 7.
Key developments on June 4: * Ukraine hacks Russia's Tupolev bomber producer, source claims * Putin's 'disregard' for troops highlighted as Russian losses approach 1 million, study finds * Ukraine expects to exchange 500 POWs in next swap with Russia, Zelensky says * Russia strikes Ukrainian military training facility in Poltava Oblast, military says
"They just don’t see a ceasefire as such at the moment," President Volodymyr Zelensky said on June 2, commenting on Russia's proposal. "I think they’re idiots, because, fundamentally, a ceasefire is meant so that there are no dead."
The bodies of soldiers were recovered from Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy and Kharkiv oblasts as well as from morgues in Russia.
Ukrainian actor and TV presenter Maksym Nelipa was killed in action on May 12, his friends and family reported on May 14. The details of his death have not been disclosed.
Actor-turned-soldier Maksym Kovtun was killed on the front line, the Dnipro Academic Youth Theater said on May 2.
These included service members killed in the Kurakhove, Pokrovsk, Bakhmut, Vuhledar, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, and Kharkiv sectors of the front, as well as those in Russian morgues.
Editor’s note: This story contains graphic images. War leaves behind more than ruins and destroyed cities — it carves an invisible mark in the form of the missing and the dead. One of the most painful and challenging aspects of war is the fate of fallen soldiers, whose bodies remain
Ratushnyi was the son of the writer Svitlana Povalyaeva and the brother of the prominent activist Roman Ratushnyi, who died in combat in 2022.
Anton Spitsyn was one of the co-founders of the unit, called the Peaky Blinders after the British crime drama series of the same name.
For children around the world, the winter holidays are about gifts and a joyful time with their families. But for some Ukrainian children, the season is bittersweet, as it highlights the absence of one or both parents killed by Russia’s full-scale invasion. Nearly 1,800 Ukrainian children have become
Editor’s Note: The following is the first in a series of reports by the Kyiv Independent about the memorialization of Ukraine’s fallen soldiers. “I'm up for cremation,” Kostiantyn “Kostia” Yuzviuk wrote in a list of funeral requests in his newly created Telegram channel for friends in November 2022
The bodies will be sent for forensic analysis and identification before being handed over to their families for burial, the headquarters said.
The suspects, with the help of an employee of the Regional Bureau of Forensic Medicine, stole payment cards and mobile phones registered in the online banking system from dead soldiers in a morgue.
The bodies were retrieved from the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, and Kharkiv sectors of the front line, as well as from the Russian-occupied territories.
Twenty-one-year-old Ukrainian soldier Nazarii Hryntsevych, also known under the call sign "Hrinka," was killed on the front lines, the Contact 12 special forces group of the Azov Brigade said on May 7.
The Geneva Conventions dictate that people who lost their lives during war are entitled to a dignified burial.
In his battle for Ukraine, Pavlo Petrychenko used not only weapons but also his voice. A renowned Kyiv activist, he fought for the prosecution of corrupt Ukrainian officials, demanding justice for his fellow activists, including Kateryna Handziuk, who was murdered in 2018. As a team member of the Serhiy Prytula
Editor's Note: The Kyiv Independent spoke with children under the permission of one of their surviving parents. At the age of 11, Arina Pervunina saw Russian troops killing her father. She and her younger brother were caught behind enemy lines at their grandparents’ house in Kherson Oblast shortly after the
The Ukrainian government has officially approved the construction of a national military memorial cemetery in the Hatne community near Kyiv, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal reported on March 15.
(Updated: )
