Vitaly Sayenko14:17, 21.06.25

Ukraine has relevant documents and evidence that the bodies handed over by Russia are Russian military and mercenaries.

Ukraine notes that Russia, as part of agreements on the exchange of bodies of fallen soldiers, is sending Ukraine the bodies of Russian soldiers and mercenaries who fought on the side of the Russian Federation.

As an UNIAN correspondent reports, Zelensky said this at a meeting with journalists on June 20, demonstrating relevant evidence.

The head of state said that the bodies of fallen soldiers are also being repatriated as part of the exchanges. However, when returning the bodies of Ukrainian defenders to Ukraine, the Russians are throwing in the bodies of their own soldiers and mercenaries.

“It has already been recorded during repatriations that the bodies of 20 people handed over to us as our fallen soldiers are “Russian”. For example, there is an Israeli mercenary who fought on their side. An Israeli citizen. With Israeli documents. Although they told us that these were only Ukrainians and only military personnel. But this is a lie, already recorded. They threw the corpses of their citizens at us. This is their attitude towards war, towards their military personnel. And this has already been documented. Sometimes these bodies even have Russian passports,” Zelensky stressed.

According to him, this means that the Russians themselves cannot even check who is being sent, since this is a large number of people, and therefore an examination is needed. “And I don’t know how much time it will take, to be honest,” the president added.

Zelensky noted that Ukraine seeks to unconditionally return all our soldiers and the bodies of Ukrainian heroes.

“But we definitely don’t want to bring back the “Russians”, just for the sake of numbers,” the president emphasized.

He also told how the Russians react to the Ukrainian side telling them that they are giving Russian citizens to Ukraine.

“No way. They say that this cannot happen. We record such facts, they are repeated. It is important to show that this is not a single fact, that this is not an accident,” Zelenskyy said.

According to the head of state, these bodies of Russians should be returned to Russia.

According to him, the Russians are deliberately throwing up the bodies of their soldiers in order to show how many Ukrainian bodies they supposedly have.

“Do you understand how it works? Because they give you thousands, and you didn’t give them thousands. That is, there were exchanges of bodies on the battlefield, they already were. But they never reached any public level. This is such a familiar military element when the killed are exchanged on the battlefield. And, to be honest, they also exchanged seriously wounded. This is absolutely normal – to exchange wounded,” Zelenskyy stressed.

In his opinion, with this massive approach to the number of those killed, the Russians will try to break the situation that many “Russians” have died.

And I think it’s important for them. Because they were afraid of recognizing this fact, of the large number of dead. Because if such a moment comes when Putin wants to mobilize someone, his society will be afraid. But if you show that for every soldier there are supposedly a hundred dead Ukrainians, then it seems like it doesn’t look so scary. That is, to break the reality in which we are, where many more are dying. We have video footage of their people killed by drones, etc. But, of course, they were advancing and their dead remained in the territory where they were,” Zelenskyy noted.

At the same time, the head of state explained why the Russians agreed to mass exchanges of prisoners and bodies of the dead during negotiations with Ukraine.

“For the “Russians” it was important to tear America away from Ukraine, to stop the aid. This is not new aid, but nevertheless it is coming. Of course, they, the Russians, need a reduction in this aid. To do this, we need to demonstrate diplomacy. Diplomacy is manifested in the possibility of meeting with the Ukrainian side, preferably without America,” the president emphasized.

He added that it is possible to end the meeting “positively” with exchanges.

“This requires an appropriate number of exchanges. That is, if, for example, a couple more meetings take place, they will demonstrate to the US that a diplomatic process is underway, and sanctions will be postponed. And while exchanges are taking place, meetings at the leadership level will also be postponed. Because it is definitely not beneficial for them,” Zelenskyy noted.

(C)UNIAN 2025