The Ukrainian Government on Friday revealed that it received the bodies of 563 soldiers from Russian authorities.

The Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War made this known in a statement made available to newsmen.

New Telegraph reports that the bodies are mostly troops who had died in combat in the eastern Donetsk region.

Since the Russian invasion in 2022, the exchange of prisoners and the bodies of killed military personnel remains one of the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv.

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“The bodies of 563 fallen Ukrainian defenders were returned to Ukraine.

“Another 154 bodies were returned from morgues inside Russia.” the statement added.

The announcement represents one of the largest repatriations of killed Ukrainian servicemen since the beginning of the war.

The statement said that 320 of the remains were returned from the Donetsk region and that 89 of the soldiers had been killed near Bakhmut, a town captured by Russia in May last year after a costly battle.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine has publicly disclosed the number of military personnel who have been killed in the fighting.