Russia awaits Ukraine’s confirmation on a planned exchange of dead fighters, officials say
Russian functionaries announced Sunday that Moscow is still awaiting official confirmation from Ukraine that a planned exchange of bodies of soldiers killed in action will take place reiterating charges that Kyiv had postponed the swap On the front line in the war Russia revealed that it had pushed into Ukraine s Dnipropetrovsk region Russian state media quoted Lt Gen Alexander Zorin a representative of the Russian negotiating group as saying that Russia delivered the first batch of bodies of Ukrainian soldiers to the exchange site at the dividing line and is waiting for confirmation from Ukraine but that there were signals that the process of transferring the bodies would be postponed until next week Citing Zorin on her Telegram channel Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova requested whether it was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy s personal decision not to take the bodies of the Ukrainians or whether someone from NATO prohibited it Russia and Ukraine each accused the other on Saturday of endangering plans to swap bodies of soldiers killed in action which was agreed upon during direct talks in Istanbul on Monday that otherwise made no progress toward ending the war Vladimir Medinsky an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin led the Russian delegation Medinsky reported that Kyiv called a last-minute halt to an imminent swap In a Telegram post on Saturday he declared that refrigerated trucks carrying more than bodies of Ukrainian troops from Russia had already reached the agreed exchange site at the territory line when the news came In response Ukraine commented that Russia was playing dirty games and manipulating facts According to the main Ukrainian authority dealing with such swaps no date had been set for repatriating the bodies In a declaration on Saturday the agency also accused Russia of submitting lists of prisoners of war for repatriation that didn t correspond to agreements reached on Monday It wasn t directly feasible to reconcile the conflicting states In other developments Russia s Defense Ministry explained Sunday that its forces had reached the western edge of the Donetsk region one of the four provinces Russia illegally annexed in and that troops were advancing the offensive in the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region This would be the first time Russian troops had pushed into the region in the more than three-year-old war Ukraine didn t straightaway respond to the claim and The Associated Press couldn t forthwith verify it Russia s advance would mark a considerable setback for Ukraine s already stretched forces as peace talks remain stalled and Russian troops have made incremental gains elsewhere One person was killed and another seriously wounded in Russian aerial strikes on the eastern Ukrainian Kharkiv region These strikes came after Russian attacks targeted the regional capital also called Kharkiv on Saturday Regional police in Kharkiv reported on Sunday that the death toll from Saturday s attacks had increased to six people More than two dozen others were wounded Russia fired a total of exploding drones and decoys and three missiles overnight Ukraine s air force declared Sunday Forty drones were shot down or electronically jammed Russia s defense ministry declared that its forces shot down Ukrainian drones overnight including near the capital Five people were wounded Sunday in a Ukrainian drone attack on a parking lot in Russia s Belgorod region according to regional Gov Vyacheslav Gladkov Two people were wounded when a Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire at a chemical plant in the Tula region local administration reported Russian bureaucrats announced early Sunday that Vnukovo and Domodedovo airports two international airports serving Moscow temporarily suspended flights because of a Ukrainian drone attack Later in the day Domodedovo halted flights temporarily for a second time along with Zhukovsky airport Follow AP s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https apnews com hub russia-ukrain
