Ukrainians Collect Bodies Of Dead Russian Soldiers To Return To Their Families

Ukrainian soldiers are reportedly collecting the bodies of Russian troops who died in the war to return them to their loved ones.

Speaking in an interview with The New York Times, a Ukrainian soldier identified only by his call sign, Summer, said they have collected a total of 62 bodies belonging to Russian soldiers. He added that many of the bodies had been lying on the battlefield for at least a month before they were collected.

Prior to the collection, a two-man team in Summer’s unit worked to identify the corpses of Russian soldiers by examining their faces, tattoos and belongings. The team also collected DNA samples from the corpses to determine if they were potential war-crime suspects.

Once the corpses have been identified, the bodies were then transferred to a refrigerated train car and would later be sent back to their families.

“We are collecting these bodies for sanitary reasons, because dogs have been eating them,” Summer said. “Eventually we will return them to their loved ones.”

There are other refrigerator trains stationed in different regions across Ukraine. There are also several hundred bodies belonging to Russian soldiers stored in facilities outside Kyiv, according to Reuters.

On Monday, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine said a total of 30,350 Russian soldiers have already died in the war, which began on Feb. 24.

The Kremlin rarely updates its casualty tolls. The last time Russia updated casualty figures was in late March, when it claimed 1,351 soldiers have died and 3,825 were injured in the fighting.

Despite the high number of casualties, Ukrainian authorities have complained that the Kremlin has been reluctant to have the remains of its soldiers killed in the war returned to their families in Russia.

“The Russian authorities don’t want these bodies,” Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in late March, adding that Russia was more concerned about covering up their massive losses in the war.

“We have the remains in fridges. We say to them, take them, they are in body bags, we can give them to the Red Cross, send them to the Belarusian border, to wherever you want, we’ll give you these bodies.”