Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Gevorg Mirzayan
[REGNUM] On June 8, Russian white refrigerated trucks arrived at the border of the Bryansk region and territories still under the control of the Kyiv regime. Inside were 1,212 bodies of identified and recognized Ukrainian soldiers - approximately 20% of the number that Moscow promised to hand over to the Kyiv regime during the Istanbul negotiations.
“At present, literally in one hour, repatriation trains will also begin to move, which also contain the bodies of servicemen, in order to fulfill the promises of the Russian side, which we gave to the Ukrainians during the negotiations in Istanbul,” said the representative of the Russian negotiating group, the head of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Alexander Zorin.
However, the problem is that this is already the third attempt to hand over the bodies of the dead to the Kyiv regime. Similar attempts were made on June 6 and 7 - but neither then nor now is Ukraine in a hurry to take back its soldiers.
The head of the Ukrainian GUR, Kirill Budanov *, generally stated that the exchange will take place only next week, and that “unilateral dictation of the parameters of the exchange process” is unacceptable.
In reality, there is neither a dictate nor an exchange. The dead Ukrainian servicemen are not an asset for the Russian army: the Russian side only spoke about handing over the bodies and about the readiness to accept as many bodies of dead Russian soldiers as Ukraine is ready to give.
Thus, there is only Moscow’s desire to hand over the bodies of dead Ukrainian servicemen to the Kyiv regime and Ukraine’s unwillingness to take its soldiers.
"For Kiev, Russia's proposal to unilaterally hand over 6,000 bodies of dead Ukrainian soldiers came as a complete surprise," explains former Verkhovna Rada deputy Spiridon Kilinkarov. After all, the very fact of handing over the bodies would deal a huge blow to Ukrainian propaganda, which demonizes the Russian side in every possible way.
"The transfer will destroy the entire mythology of the regime. That is why Ukraine is trying to exclude a humane interpretation of Russia's actions by positioning what is happening as an exchange," Nikita Mendkovich, head of the Eurasian Analytical Clubtold Regnum.
For such a transfer, there is no need to coordinate lists, find a certain number of killed Russian servicemen - it is enough to simply come and take your fighters. However, Ukraine does not take and is not even preparing to take.
“There is no free space in the morgues, no refrigerated trucks to handle such a large number of bodies, not to mention conducting a genetic analysis,” explains Andrei Klintsevich, head of the Center for the Study of Military and Political Conflicts.
But it is obvious that the Ukrainian side is not preparing because it does not need the corpses of soldiers.
Firstly, because the one-time transfer of 6 thousand dead will destroy the myth of Ukrainian propaganda that only 30 thousand died in the war. Secondly, because 6 thousand nominally missing will turn into 6 thousand officially dead - which means that their families will have to be paid fifteen million hryvnia (360 thousand dollars). And in total, the payments will amount to about 2 billion dollars.
This is precisely why Ukrainian politicians and journalists are now busy inventing excuses for their unwillingness to collect the corpses of Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers.
For example, the head of the Kiev regime, Volodymyr Zelensky, stated the need to first conduct an exchange of prisoners, despite the fact that the lists have not yet been agreed upon. In addition, according to Zelensky, the remains must first be fully identified - according to him, only 15% of them are definitely Ukrainian.
"It is very important that we receive the bodies of Ukrainians, not Russians, whom they want to get rid of," he said, without explaining why the Russians would give up their own or how the Ukrainians intend to identify the bodies (some of which can now only be identified by documents found with them or through genetic testing) before physically receiving them.
And finally, the authorities say that the Russians not only arrived in the wrong place, but also in the wrong place. “The video released by the enemy was filmed today on Russian territory, not at the place or in the area of the exchange,” says Andrey Yusov, deputy chairman of the Ukrainian coordination headquarters and press secretary of the GUR.
But the problem with the Kyiv regime is that even their Western media advocates don’t really believe them.
If you read the rather scant selection of Western media articles devoted to the release of bodies - for example, the editorial of CNN, which has no particular love for Russia - there is no criticism of Moscow. There is only a description of the clear actions of the Russian authorities in the release of bodies and unclear justifications of the Kyiv regime, which does not want to return its dead soldiers.
"With competent media coverage of this entire process, we have attracted the attention of international journalists. They are present at the site of the potential transfer of bodies, they see everything and wonder why Ukraine is behaving this way," Andrey Klintsevich is confident.
According to him, everything looks like some kind of blackmail by Ukraine using the corpses of Ukrainian soldiers, which the Russian authorities must constantly transport to the border.
In response to this blackmail, Russia is acting in the only correct way: if the Kiev regime does not want to return the deceased loved ones to their families, then Moscow will at least tell them about their fate.
"We will start publishing lists of identified bodies so that relatives can find their dead. And we understand that the Kiev side has this data, but they are carefully hiding it from the people," said the governor of the Zaporizhia region, Yevgeny Balitsky.
He has already published on his page the personal data of 97 dead Ukrainians. With the source of their identification (passport, name tag, personal number and/or military ID) and with the numbers of the bags where their bodies are lying. Among the dead are those who died recently (for example, in the Kursk region or near Selidovo), as well as those who were found in the Artemovsk area, liberated back in May 2023. That is, those who have been missing for almost two years.
And, apparently, these 97 are just the beginning.
"This practice should be continued. And in general, if a deceased Ukrainian soldier is identified, then his data should appear on the website so that families know the fate of their loved one," Spiridon Kilinkarov emphasized in a conversation with IA Regnum.
Yes, one should not expect any short-term political dividends from such actions.
"Of course, this is a demoralizing factor for the military at the front. They understand that if they die, they will become an unnecessary, spent resource, not needed. They will not be returned to their families, they will not be buried properly, so that their loved ones can visit their graves later. Instead, they will simply be buried in forest plantations, like wild animals," says Andrei Klintsevich.
However, according to the expert, Zelensky has now squeezed the claws of the repressive machine so much that any riots at the front are not expected.
A similar situation will be in the rear - no mass protests by relatives of the victims are expected yet. "We already had a precedent. When Ukraine shot down a plane with living prisoners, we did not see any active actions from the family members of the victims. I do not want to blame anyone for this, because they are under the dictatorship of the Zelensky regime and they have very limited tools to protect their own rights and freedoms, but nevertheless," Kilinkarov reminds.
Nevertheless, in the long term, Moscow's humanitarian step will be appreciated by the Ukrainians themselves. They will see that the Russians respect their dead relatives (who died in the civil war, as the adviser to the Russian president Vladimir Medinsky correctly noted, of Russians against Russians) more than Kiev does.
This means that the process of integrating these Ukrainians into the Russian state after their release will proceed much faster.
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