Bodies of 502 fallen soldiers returned to Ukraine

Ukraine has managed to return 502 bodies of the soldiers who died defending their homeland.

The Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War reported on November 29.

Most of the defenders were killed in the Donetsk region.

“Among the returned fallen defenders of Ukraine: 397 are from the Donetsk region; 24 – from the Luhansk region; 64 – from the Zaporizhzhia region; 17 dead were returned from morgues of the Russian Federation,” the statement said.

Further, expert institutions will identify the victims as soon as possible. After identification, the bodies of the Ukrainian defenders will be handed over to their families for a decent burial.

On November 8, the Coordination Headquarters reported that the bodies of 563 fallen soldiers had been returned to Ukraine.

On October 18, the bodies of 501 fallen Ukrainian defenders were returned.

In early March 2024, Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets reported that more than 2,800 bodies and body fragments of military personnel had been identified in Ukraine.

It is not known how many bodies remain unidentified.

The government did not report its losses for a long time, saying that this data would be disclosed after the war.

On February 25, 2024, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi announced the number of Ukrainian military killed for the first time since the start of the full-scale invasion. It is 31 thousand. However, these figures do not include civilian casualties, for which there is very little data. It is believed that many tens of thousands of civilians were killed.

At the same time, Zelenskyi said that he could not disclose how many of the Ukrainian military were wounded or missing.