Kyiv confirms remains of 503 fallen soldiers returned from Russia

Kyiv said Friday it had received the bodies of 503 killed Ukrainian service members from Russia, in the latest return of remains that points to the high cost of fighting.

The exchange of prisoners and bodies of killed military personnel remains one of the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv since Russia invaded in 2022.

"The bodies of 503 fallen Ukrainian defenders were returned to territory controlled by the Government of Ukraine," the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in a statement on social media.

The repatriation reported on Friday is at least the fourth involving 500 or more bodies since October, and illustrates the toll of costly battles being fought nearly three full years into the Russian invasion.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said this month that 43,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed and 370,000 had been wounded since the Kremlin dispatched its army to Ukraine in February 2022.

The Coordination Headquarters said Friday that 403 bodies had been returned from the Donetsk region, which has suffered the worst of the fight.

The rest were returned from the Lugansk, and Zaporizhzhia regions and from morgues inside Russia.

The Kremlin claimed to have annexed the three territories, along with the southern Kherson region in late 2022 but does not have complete control over any of them.

Russia does not announce the return of its bodies or give up-to-date information on the numbers of its troops killed fighting in Ukraine.