There are at least 20 bodies of dead occupants that Russia handed over under the guise of Ukrainians
During the repatriation, the Russians handed over at least 20 bodies of the fallen occupiers among the fallen Ukrainian defenders. This was announced during a meeting with journalists by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the correspondent of LIGA.net.
"It has already been recorded during repatriations that the bodies of 20 people handed over to us as our fallen soldiers are Russians. For example, there is an Israeli mercenary who fought on their side. He is an Israeli citizen. He has Israeli documents. Although they told us that they were only Ukrainians and only military," the head of state said.
According to him, the occupiers "planted" the bodies of their citizens in Ukraine. Sometimes these bodies are even with Russian passports, and this has already been documented, the president said.
"This means that they can't even check who they are sending, because it's a large number of people. We need an expert examination. And I don't know how long it will take, to be honest," Zelensky added.
Ukraine wants to return all Ukrainian soldiers and bodies of heroes, "but we definitely do not want to return Russians, just for the sake of numbers," President says.
He emphasized that the Russians say "it can't be possible" [the transfer of bodies of Russians disguised as Ukrainians]. Ukraine records all these facts, because they are repeated.
"It's important to show that this is not just one fact, that this is not an accident. We believe that they are doing this on purpose. To show how many Ukrainian bodies they allegedly have," Zelensky said.
- On June 16, Ukraine managed to return another 1,245 bodies of fallen soldiers. The repatriation part of the Istanbul agreements was completed – in total, Ukraine received more than 6,000 bodies in five days.
- On the same day, Klymenko said that during the latest repatriations Russia handed over to Ukraine the bodies of its military mixed with those of Ukrainian defenders. Ukraine identified the body of one of the occupiers.
- On June 18, the Interior Minister said that as Russia handed over 6060 bodies mixed with the remains of the occupiers to Ukraine as part of the Istanbul agreements, it would take at least 13-14 months to identify them.
