As part of the repatriation activities, the Russian Federation handed over to Ukraine the bodies of 20 of its dead soldiers, some of whom even had passports.
President Volodymyr Zelensky stated this during a conversation with journalists on June 21.
Among the dead transferred to Ukraine are the bodies of 20 Russians
— It has already been recorded during repatriations that the bodies of 20 people handed over to us as our dead soldiers are “Russians”. For example, there is an Israeli mercenary who fought on their side. A citizen of Israel… Although they told us that they were only Ukrainians and only soldiers. But this is a lie, already recorded, — he emphasized.
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According to him, some of the bodies of dead Russians handed over to Ukraine had passports.
“Sometimes these bodies even have Russian passports. This means that they themselves cannot even check who they are sending, since this is a large number of people… We certainly want to return all our soldiers and the bodies of our heroes, but we definitely do not want to return the “Russians” just for the sake of numbers,” the head of state added.
Zelensky said that in response to comments about Russia handing over its citizens, they only say that this cannot happen.
— We are recording such facts, they are repeated. It is important to show that this is not a single fact, that this is not an accident. The Ministry of Internal Affairs, together with the Ministry of Health and the General Staff, is dealing with the returned bodies. There is a certain procedure. What about the bodies of the Russians that were handed over? They must be given back to them, — the president believes.
In his opinion, the Russians are doing this deliberately to show how many supposedly Ukrainian bodies they have.
Earlier, Interior Minister Igor Klimenko reported that they had identified individual Russian soldiers whose bodies the Russian Federation had returned as part of the repatriation of the dead along with the bodies of Ukrainian defenders.
According to him, this is further proof of how disdainfully Russia treats its people.
