Russia and Ukraine have exchanged more bodies of their war dead, according to a Kremlin aide, as part of an agreement reached during a second round of peace talks in Turkey.
Exchanges of captured soldiers and the repatriation of remains have taken place regularly since the brief renewal of peace talks in Istanbul in May in what amounts to some of the only successful diplomacy between the two sides in their more than three-year war.
Head Russian diplomat Vladimir Medinsky posted photos on Thursday showing people in white medical suits lifting white body bags from the back of refrigerated trucks. Russia plans to return the bodies of 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers, and this exchange marked the beginning of that process, Russia’s RIA state news agency reported. last month.
In a further diplomatic development, another round of reunification of minors with their families in Russia and Ukraine took place on Thursday with the mediation of Qatar at its Moscow embassy. Eleven children will reunite with their families in Ukraine and three others with their families in Russia. So far, more than 100 children have reunited with their families since Qatar began facilitating the process.
Ukraine said Russia took 20,000 children during the war and has given Moscow a list of hundreds who, they said, were taken from Russian-occupied Ukrainian regions since 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin faces war crime charges before the International Criminal Court in The Hague for the alleged “unlawful deportation and transfer of children”.
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