Ukraine, with the assistance of the International Committee of the Red Cross, returned home the bodies of 541 defenders, most of them from Mariupol, Oleg Kotenko, Commissioner for Missing Persons in Special Circumstances, said..

“We have already managed to return 541 dead defenders. 428 bodies delivered from Mariupol, more than 300 of them are Azovstal defenders. We are returning the dead from Donetsk, Zaporozhye, Kherson, Kharkiv, Luhansk directions - from everywhere,” Kotenko said.

The return of the dead is handled by the Ministry of Reintegration of the TOT, after the creation of the Office of the Commissioner, this process has accelerated. According to him, negotiations with Russia are difficult, but the parties still managed to establish communication.

“We are handing over to the Russian side the locations where our dead are. They have to pick them up, and then we make exchanges. But the Russian Federation does not always want to go to the war zone, although a silence regime is declared. It can even be difficult to arrange for the bodies of our guys to be taken to HERE,” he said..

Also, the Russians do not have enough people: due to the large losses of personnel, they cannot cope with their dead.

Kotenko also noted that Ukrainian officials are in constant communication with the families of the dead and missing.. The Ministry of Reintegration has already held more than 20 meetings with relatives of Ukrainian defenders.

“It is difficult to explain to a person whose relative has died why sometimes it takes a long time to return his body. People in grief - they are not always ready to hear.

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He urged Ukrainians not to trust the fakes of propagandists that Ukraine allegedly does not need its defenders.. And if the connection with a loved one is broken, contact the Ministry of Reintegration.

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It should be noted that during June and July, the morgues of Kyiv received more than 270 bodies of the dead from different regions of the country, caught in the maelstrom of hostilities.. In particular, from the territory of Azovstal, most of them remain unidentified.