- Category
- Latest news
Ukraine Alleges Russia Hid Own War Dead Among Ukrainian Repatriations
- Authors
![Photo of Roman Kohanets]( "Photo of Roman Kohanets")
-111f0e5095e02c02446ffed57bfb0ab1.jpeg "Photo of Roman Kohanets")
Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klimenko accused Russia of deliberately transferring bodies of its own fallen soldiers among those repatriated to Kyiv—an act he calls disrespectful and aimed at evading compensation to the families, RBC Ukraine reported on June 19.
Ukraine and Russia agreed during the June 2 peace talks in Istanbul to exchange up to 6,000 bodies each. Under that deal, in the first phase Kyiv received more than 1,000 sets of remains from the east and the Kursk region, and subsequent stages saw an additional 2,400 bodies repatriated.
Klimenko announced that forensic teams discovered at least one set of remains—body No. 192/25—dressed in a Russian uniform and carrying a Russian passport, military ID, an identification tag and related documents identifying the deceased as Alexander Viktorovich Bugaev, born 1974.
Klimenko released photographs of the recovered documentation on the Interior Ministry’s Telegram channel, saying: “This shows Russia’s total disregard for its own soldiers—planting them among Ukrainian bodies. Whether intentional or through habitual negligence, it denies proper identification and funeral honors to their families. But we will return every one of these bodies.”
Despite Russia’s claims—repeated by the Russian leader Vladimir Putin—that Moscow had already delivered 6,000 Ukrainian bodies in return for only 57 of its own killed servicemen, Ukraine’s tally far exceeds that figure. Putin’s statement has been dismissed by Kyiv as an effort to mask the true human cost and to shirk financial obligations for soldiers’ families .
Klimenko vowed legal action: “We will insist on full transparency. Families deserve to know the fate of their loved ones, and Russia must answer for every life it has misrepresented.”
Earlier, in related news, Ukraine completed the final phase of the Istanbul body-exchange on June 16, receiving 1,245 more bodies and bringing the total to 6,057 repatriated under the deal.
