Ukraine Receives Bodies of 522 Fallen Soldiers in Latest Repatriation

Ukraine has recovered the bodies of 522 deceased citizens, including military personnel, following a new repatriation operation, as reported by Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

According to the agency’s report on Thursday, the remains were returned through a joint effort involving the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), the interior ministry, the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, the State Emergency Service, and other security and defense institutions.

“According to the Russian side, the bodies belong to Ukrainian citizens, including military personnel,” the agency wrote, casting doubt on the claim following reports in 2025 that remains of dead Russian troops were mixed in during an exchange at the time.

Ukrainian investigators and forensic experts will now conduct examinations and identification procedures to establish the identities of the repatriated remains.

The coordination headquarters said all necessary forensic analyses would be carried out in cooperation with expert institutions under the interior ministry.

Additionally, the headquarters thanked the International Committee of the Red Cross for assisting in the repatriation process.

Officials also expressed gratitude to Ukrainian military personnel who transported the remains to designated state institutions and coordinated their transfer to law enforcement authorities and forensic medical services.

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Prior exchanges

In May, Ukraine completed another repatriation operation, returning the bodies and remains of 528 fallen defenders.

This followed a prior exchange on April 9, when the remains of 1,000 deceased personnel were brought back.

This came after Kyiv and Moscow in June 2025 had agreed to exchange all prisoners of war who were seriously wounded or under the age of 25.

As part of the same agreement, both sides committed to returning the bodies of 6,000 fallen soldiers each, according to Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s defense minister at the time.

The deal enabled the repatriation of several thousand bodies throughout mid-to-late 2025 across eastern and southern Ukraine, as well as the Kursk region.

According to publicly available data, Ukraine has received around 18,000 bodies from Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion – a figure likely to rise following recent operations.