Deputy Klimenko: Russia does not take the bodies of its dead from the ground – it is not its priority

Russia is not taking away the bodies of the dead occupiers at the moment, as it is not the enemy's priority. The occupiers often move forward on the corpses of their comrades, said LIGA.net in an interview "DNA Match – 99.9%". How the years of war have changed the body exchanges with Russia and why there are unidentified bodies" by Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Leonid Tymchenko.

He commented on the tendency of Russians not to take the bodies of their own soldiers, which was quite popular at the beginning of the full-scale war.

According to Tymchenko, in 2022, search groups operated from the very beginning on both sides. They included volunteers and the military, who, with the consent of the Russians, went to the gray zone and took the bodies of the fallen. Enemy search groups acted in the same way.

Currently, the enemy is trying to take the bodies of its dead on the territory where there is no longer any danger. But he often leaves them behind.

"Now they mostly do not pick up bodies that are at zero. According to our estimates, there are hundreds of them every day, so recovering bodies is not a priority for the Russians. The most important thing for them is to move forward. They use the tactics of so-called meat assaults. And we see that they are walking right over the bodies of the dead," said the Deputy Minister .

If some Russians entered the position yesterday and died there, then when the next occupants enter, they must go further to keep up the pace of advance.

"They can't go back, they are forced to establish themselves, including on the territories where their dead lie – and not all of them have been dead since yesterday," Timchenko summarized .

• on June 16, 2025, Klymenko said that during the latest repatriations Russia handed over to Ukraine the bodies of its military mixed with those of Ukrainian defenders. According to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy,, at least 20 bodies of the occupiers.
• The Interior Minister said that it would take Ukraine more than a year to identify the bodies of fallen soldiers handed over by Russia. The process is complicated by the fact that the remains were handed over together with bodies in the uniforms of the occupying army.
• On June 23, it became known that Ukraine identified and returned to the Russians three Russia did not provide any explanation for the transfer of its dead under the guise of Ukrainian prisoners.