Novaya Guta, October 23, 2026 – The Europe Today: Russia has returned the bodies of 252 Ukrainian servicemen killed in the ongoing conflict and received the remains of 25 Russian soldiers in exchange, according to reports from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
The transfer took place on Thursday on Belarusian territory near the Novaya Guta crossing on the border with Ukraine. Officials and media in all three countries confirmed the figures. Video footage released from the site showed representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross observing the handover.
Repatriations of the fallen have become a recurring humanitarian channel between Moscow and Kyiv, carried out alongside periodic exchanges of prisoners of war. Unlike prisoner swaps, which are generally conducted on a one-for-one basis, body transfers frequently involve unequal numbers. Observers sympathetic to Kyiv have argued that this imbalance does not reflect actual casualty ratios, since the side that holds or advances into contested territory is better placed to recover the dead. The latest transfer came after Ukraine reported a significant offensive near the city of Lyman.
Neither Moscow nor Kyiv releases comprehensive official figures on military losses, and casualty estimates remain widely disputed. In July, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky put the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed at roughly 50,000, a figure that some analysts have questioned as too low. Large numbers of servicemen on both sides are also listed as missing in action.
The repatriation process has at times been marked by mutual accusations. In the summer of 2025, Russian officials alleged that Ukraine had declined to accept hundreds of bodies, a claim Kyiv denied. In mid-June 2025, Russia returned around 1,200 bodies to Ukraine over three separate days.
