Russia returned the bodies of 522 people to Ukraine on 18 June 2026, the latest handover in the recurring repatriation of soldiers killed in Russia's war on Ukraine. Russian officials claim the remains belong to Ukrainian citizens, including military personnel.
The return was carried out by Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, which announced the transfer. The Security Service's Joint Center, the armed forces, and other agencies took part, with the International Committee of the Red Cross assisting.
Forensic experts from the Interior Ministry will now begin identifying the dead, and the work is slow. Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said in remarks carried by the National Police that full identification of repatriated remains takes around 14 months, in large part because of the condition in which the bodies arrive.
Russia often hands over the remains of several people in a single bag, Klymenko said, and parts of one person are sometimes found across different bags—or even across different stages of repatriation. Ukrainian specialists run DNA tests on every body and every fragment, and any remains found not to belong to Ukrainian defenders are sent back to Russia.
The bodies frequently arrive without identification: of one earlier batch of 6,000, only 15% came identified, President Zelenskyy said. Once DNA tests confirm a body is that of a Ukrainian defender, it is released to relatives to be honored and buried.
The 18 June handover is the latest in a steady cadence of returns. Ukraine received 528 bodies in a near-identical operation in May, and 1,000 last November, then the third large-scale return in two months.
The exchanges stem from the June 2025 talks in Istanbul, where Russia and Ukraine agreed to repatriate the remains of 6,000 fallen on each side. Ukraine took back more than 6,000 bodies in the weeks that followed; Russia, by its own account, received only dozens.
