'Show Respect For Fallen Soldiers': Ukraine Wants Moscow To Remove Bodies Of Russians Killed In War

Amid conflicting reports about the number of Russians who perished in Ukraine, Kyiv has reportedly sought the aid of the Red Cross to persuade Russia to collect the bodies of its men from Ukrainian territory.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal met with the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, last Thursday in this regard, according to local media Ukrinform.

The report added that Ukraine wanted Russia to "collect and identify the bodies of the fallen military forces of the occupier."

"We drew the attention of the Red Cross that Russia has not yet requested the extradition of the bodies and remains of their dead, the number of which exceeded 14 thousand," said a statement by Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine's Minister for the Temporarily Occupied Territories.

Vereshchuk added that the Ukrainian side wants Russia "to show respect for its fallen soldiers" and begin negotiations to remove them from Ukraine.

This comes as the West alleges Russia is hiding the true number of its men killed in the war. While NATO claims Russia has lost around 7,000 to 15,000 soldiers ever since it unleashed its military invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Moscow pegs the official numbers at just 498 till Monday.

There is so far no information from Russia, where there is strict media censorship, about funerals held for slain soldiers. However, reports about the funeral of a 21-year-old paratrooper, who was laid to rest in his remote home village of Zubkovo in western Siberia, were all over international media recently.

Meanwhile, Vitaly Kim, a Ukrainian governor, recently alleged that Russian forces were leaving the bodies of their dead colleagues in the region. Kim, the head of the Mykolaiv region, told CNN that "there were hundreds of them all over the region." He claimed to have instructed local people to keep the bodies in refrigerators and sent them back to Russia for identification through DNA testing. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky too had claimed that the Russian army sent mobile crematoriums to burn their own dead.

Recently, Radio Free Europe reported how Ukrainian special search group members were collecting the dead bodies of Russian soldiers in the hopes to exchange them for Ukrainian prisoners of war. It said local Ukrainians were dumping the bodies in bomb craters.

There are also mentions about how morgues in Belarus are filling up with bodies of dead Russian soldiers. According to residents of Belarus, corpses of Russians killed in the war are being brought to Belarus in trucks before being sent back home by train or plane. The report added that the people were taken aback by the number of corpses piled up inside the morgues in Belarusian cities of Mozyr and Gomel.