As Ukraine Recovers 909 Fallen, Russia Hides Its Death Toll

Ukraine has recovered the bodies of 909 soldiers who died during hostilities on eight active front line areas, according to the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War (POW).

The report shared on Telegram on Friday, May 16, reads that the fallen include servicemen who lost their lives defending Ukraine in some of the most intense combat zones: Kurakhove, Pokrovsk, Bakhmut, Vuhledar, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, and Kharkiv. It also includes bodies previously held in morgues on Russian territory.

According to the report, personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are transporting the repatriated bodies to designated state institutions, where they are handed over to law enforcement officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and forensic experts from the Ministry of Health.

“Law enforcement investigators, together with expert institutions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, will establish the identities of the deceased as soon as possible,” the statement said.

Ukraine regularly carries out exchanges of fallen soldiers with Russia. The last such return of 909 bodies took place in mid-April.

April’s repatriation marked at least the eighth time since last October that 500 or more bodies of Ukrainian soldiers were returned. A similar transfer involving 909 bodies occurred on March 28.

Russia, in contrast, does not publicly report the return of its fallen soldiers and has not provided updated casualty figures since the fall of 2022, when it claimed fewer than 6,000 troops had been killed.

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In mid-February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told NBC News that over 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, with around 380,000 wounded.

Meanwhile, an ongoing investigation by Mediazona and BBC News Russian has verified the identities of roughly 100,000 Russian soldiers killed in the war, based on open-source data.

AFU Junior Sgt. Stanislav Bunyatov, call sign “Osman,” said that Russia has returned more bodies to Ukraine than vice versa. He explained this was likely due to Ukrainian losses in territories now occupied by Russia, following retreats along certain parts of the front.