Bodies of 1,000 dead defenders returned to Ukraine: among them - those who died in captivity

This was reported by Telegram of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

Among the repatriated there are five servicemen who died in captivity. They were on the lists of "seriously wounded and seriously ill" prisoners to be exchanged under the agreements reached in Istanbul during the second round of negotiations. The coordinating headquarters stressed that the Russian side continues to delay the process and does not fulfil its commitments. Ukraine insists on the immediate release of all seriously wounded and seriously ill prisoners of war and continues to fight for the return of all citizens.

Among those returned "on the shield" are defenders from Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya, Luhansk and Kursk directions. In the near future investigators together with expert institutions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs will carry out the necessary expertise and identification of bodies.

Work on repatriation was carried out by the Coordination Headquarters, the Joint Centre under the SBU, the AFU, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Office of the Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for Human Rights, the Secretariat of the Commissioner for Missing Persons in Special Circumstances, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine and other agencies.

Earlier Socialportal wrote about the story of Ukrainian human rights defender Maksym Butkevich, who spent more than two years in Russian captivity. Maksym was sentenced to 13 years in the Russian Federation on a trumped-up case, which claimed that he was an extremist who ran a detachment of far-right radicals. These charges shocked everyone who knew Maksim. He was a human rights activist for decades, co-founder of the organisation Without Borders, and one of the few people in Ukraine who cared about the fate of asylum seekers, refugees, and foreign students who faced arbitrariness, rudeness, and intolerance. He also assisted political refugees stemming from authoritarian regimes, primarily Putin's.