Ukraine receives 1,200 bodies of dead Ukrainian soldiers

Ukraine has received 1,200 bodies of its soldiers killed in the war with Russia, Ukrainian officials responsible for exchanging prisoners of war said on Saturday.

The prisoner exchange coordination committee said in a statement on the Telegram that the return of the bodies was part of the agreements reached by Ukraine and Russia during their talks in Istanbul earlier this month.

Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed on Saturday that Ukraine had stopped the Russian offensive on the northeastern Sumy region and denied that Moscow's troops entered the Dnipropetrovsk region.

This handout photograph shows Ukrainian special team members attending the repatriation of bodies of Ukrainian soldiers. AFP

"The Northern-Sloboda direction, which we call the Sumy direction. We are levelling our position...you must understand that the enemy has been stopped there," he said in a statement released on Saturday, adding that "there is currently no advance of the group towards the Dnipropetrovsk region."

Agencies