Kyiv received the bodies of at least 20 Russian soldiers instead of Ukrainian ones during recent exchanges of war dead with Moscow, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, accusing Russia of "not checking" who they were sending.
“They threw the corpses of their citizens at us. This is their attitude toward war, toward their soldiers. And this is already documented. Sometimes these bodies even have Russian passports,” Zelenskyy said. He claimed that the Russian side insisted the dead were all Ukrainians.
Zelenskyy spoke to reporters in Kyiv on June 20 but his comments were embargoed until June 21.
Journalists were shown a Russian passport and ID that Ukrainian authorities said belonged to one of the 20 dead Russians. The document stated that the man came from the Moscow region. Officials did not disclose the identities of the bodies.
The repatriations were conducted following two rounds of direct peace talks in Istanbul in early June that produced agreements on the return of prisoners and the bodies of the dead but brought no visible progress on ending Russia's war against Ukraine.
During the second round of the talks, Ukraine and Russia agreed to exchange the bodies of 6,000 soldiers each. But Kyiv was concerned that the number was too high and that the sides did not have enough time for forensic examinations and checking the identities of the dead.
Tens of thousands of soldiers have been killed on both sides since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Neither country regularly issues information on military casualties.
Ukraine Seeks Western Support To Boost Its Weapon Production
Zelenskyy also said Ukraine has began using domestically produced interceptors to shoot down Russian drones and asked Ukraine’s Western allies to allocate 0.25 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) to helping Kyiv ramp up weapons production.
Ukraine was in talks with Denmark, Norway, Germany, Canada, Britain, and Lithuania to launch joint weapon production, he added.
"Ukraine is part of Europe's security and we want 0.25 percent of the GDP of a particular partner country to be allocated for our defense industry and domestic production," Zelenskyy said.
Zelenskyy said that Ukraine had secured $43 billion this year to finance its domestic weapon production.
NATO heads of state will meet at their upcoming summit in The Hague next week to discuss higher defense spending.
The 32-nation military alliance’s Secretary General Mark Rutte has proposed that countries should each agree to spend 5 percent of their GDP on defense and security measures.
