Russia has handed Ukraine the remains of 522 people it identified as killed soldiers, officials said, one of the few acts of cooperation between the warring countries.
"As a result of the repatriation efforts, the bodies of 522 deceased individuals have been returned to Ukraine," Ukraine's prisoners of war centre said on social media on Thursday.
"According to the Russian side, the bodies belong to citizens of Ukraine, in particular servicemen," it added.
Russian parliamentarian Shamsail Saraliyev confirmed the information to Russian broadcaster RBC.
He said Russia had received the bodies of 33 of its own soldiers in return.
Ukraine did not say whether it handed any bodies to Russia.
Thousands of bodies repatriated
Photos from the Ukrainian prisoners of war centre showed masked men in white overalls unloading white trucks.
The swap announcement coincided with each side launching mass drone barrages at the other's capitals.
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Talks on ending more than four years of war remain frozen.
Since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine in 2022, exchanges of prisoners and the remains of fallen fighters have been one of the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kiev.
There is no single verified total for all prisoner and body exchanges between Russia and Ukraine since the war began.
Russia and Ukraine each keep their own records, and their figures often do not match.
Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War reported in February that more than 8,000 Ukrainian prisoners have been returned from Russian captivity since the war began.
In prisoner exchanges, the two sides typically swap equal numbers of captives.
The same applies to the repatriation of fallen soldiers, with both countries returning similar numbers of remains to one another.
The conflict is believed to have killed hundreds of thousands of people, according to various reports.
