Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv repatriates more bodies of fallen soldiers amid major exchange with Russia

Ukraine has repatriated more bodies of fallen soldiers in accordance with an agreement reached during peace talks in Istanbul, Ukrainian officials said Friday. Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said Russia had returned 1,200 bodies, and “according to the Russian side, the bodies belong to Ukrainian citizens, in particular military personnel”. The repatriation of the bodies was carried out with the help of Ukraine’s armed forces, the country’s security service, the interior ministry and other government agencies, its statement said. Forensic experts would now work to identify the remains. The repatriation marks one of the war’s largest returns of remains.

Russia says its forces have captured another village in Ukraine’s north-eastern Sumy region amid its ramped-up offensive there. Moscow’s defence ministry said on Friday it had taken control of the village of Yablunivka, about 9km (five miles) from the Russian border. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukrainian forces are “gradually pushing back the occupiers” in the border region but prevailing assessments have shown Russian gains.

Russia’s defence ministry said Russian forces had also taken control of two other Ukrainian villages – Koptevo and Komar in the eastern Donetsk region, Russia’s Tass news agency reported. The ministry said Russian troops had captured six Ukrainian villages over the past week. The battlefield reports could not be independently verified.

A 73-year-old American jailed by Russia as a mercenary for Ukraine protested his innocence when his US-based legal team and family finally tracked him down in April, months after he vanished into the vast Russian prison system, they said. Stephen Hubbard, a retired schoolteacher, was sentenced last October to almost seven years in a penal colony and Russian state media reported that he had entered a guilty plea in the closed-door trial. His US-based lawyer, who made his first public comments on the case to the New York Times this week, said: “The first thing Hubbard wanted to talk about when he was able to make contact with the outside world was: ‘It’s not true.’” US officials have requested his immediate release.

Ukraine’s air force said on Friday that Russia fired 55 Shahed and decoy drones and four ballistic missiles at Ukraine overnight. The air force said air defences had neutralised 43 drones. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. Russia’s defence ministry, meanwhile, said its air defences had downed 125 Ukrainian drones over several Russian regions and the annexed region of Crimea into early Friday.