As part of the prisoner exchange agreement between warriors, the bodies of 1,212 Ukrainian soldiers have been returned from Russia, Kiev says.
In return, Russia received 27 bodies, said Vladimir Medinsky, the chief negotiator of Moscow.
The prisoner exchange contract was the only concrete result of peace negotiations in Turkey last week, with both sides agreeing to hand over as many as 6,000 bodies each, and to hand over prisoners under the age of 25 who have been ill or seriously injured.
Medinsky announced that Russia will begin trading “severely injured prisoners” on Thursday.
The dead soldiers came from various parts of Ukraine, including Donetsk, Khalkiv, Harson and Zaporidia.
The Centre added that “establish the identity of the deceased as soon as possible.”
This is not the first time a body has been deported in this conflict – thousands have already been exchanged with over 70 individual deportations.
The exchange follows several days of accusations from Moscow that Ukraine had not collected the bodies, and Medynsky said he had been sitting in a refrigerated truck at the exchange point since Saturday.
Medinsky also said on Saturday that Ukraine had “unexpectedly postponed” the prisoner swap. In response, Ukraine said that Russia was playing “dirty tricks” and manipulating the facts.
The first round of the exchange took place on Monday. There was an emotional scene as families of missing Ukrainian soldiers gathered near the Belarus border and forced information about their loved ones on returning prisoners.
The soldiers on both sides were exchanged that day, but neither Russia nor Ukraine gave exactly the number of people exchanged.
