Ukraine returned 400 bodies of the dead, most of them from Azovstal/Dmitry Kazatsky< p _ngcontent-sc88="" class="news-annotation">As part of the exchanges with Russia, Ukraine returns the prisoners and the bodies of the dead. Over the entire period of the full-scale invasion, more than 400 bodies of fallen servicemen were returned.
This was announced by Oleg Kostenko, Commissioner for Missing Persons under Special Circumstances. Most of the returned bodies are dead defenders of Azovstal. On July 12, another 30 bodies of dead servicemen were returned on July 12 as part of another exchange, as reported by the Ministry of Reintegration.
Many bodies are returned without documents
Oleg Kostenko noted that often the relatives of soldiers from Azovstal understand that their relatives could have died and donate DNA. However, if in the near future Ukraine will return a large number of bodies of dead soldiers in different directions, the number of cases when it is difficult to identify the body may increase.
If now we take the majority of people not from Azovstal, then there will be more cases when there is a body, but they did not pass the DNA. Therefore, when I am negotiating, there is an agreement with Russia to write about at least where the body is from – is it the Luhansk direction, Volnovakha or is it the Kharkov direction and the like. For there are a lot of bodies without documents, we don’t know who they are,” Kostenko explained.
The Commissioner also said that those who return the bodies of the dead through the exchange end up in 1 out of 3 morgues – in Kyiv, Dnipro or Kharkov. It is also planned to open a morgue in Zaporozhye.
However, the relatives of the missing do not need to take DNA in these cities – they can do it in any city in the country, and the result will fall into a single database.
The return of another 30 bodies of dead servicemen took place as part of the operation in the Zaporozhye region with the cooperation of the Main Intelligence Directorate, the Security Service of Ukraine, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other law enforcement agencies.
How many Ukrainian soldiers are considered missing
The day before, Oleg Kostenko said that 7,200 servicemen are considered missing in Ukraine . That is how many statements were registered in accordance with the appeals of relatives.
The Commissioner for Missing Persons explained the disagreements with the data of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which reported more than 2,000 military personnel. Kostenko noted that the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported only the number of their missing fighters, and the figure he announced takes into account the fighters of the National Guard, the State Border Service, the police and other law enforcement agencies.
Most Ukrainian fighters who are considered missing are alive.
