Russia sending bodies of Ukrainian soldiers to the border, General says

2 comments

1. >He also said there were signals that the transfer of the bodies will be postponed until next week.

   Second time isn’t going to be the charm I guess. A couple days ago when Russia tried to transfer the bodies Zelensky accused Russia of trying an unscheduled transfer and also claimed that Russia was trying to give Ukraine mostly dead Russian soldiers.

   It’s an awkward situation for Ukraine because if they reject these 6,000 Ukrainian bodies they’ll agitate the families of the massive number of MIA soldiers in Ukraine. And if they accept them they have to pay death benefits and also admit that their claims of only losing 50,000 soldiers so far are completely absurd.

   It’s also bad optics because they don’t have many Russian bodies to give in exchange due to the way the battlefield works, Russia recovers almost all of their own bodies and Ukraine has a lot of unrecoverable ones since they hold positions far too long which ends up with a lot of soldiers dead or captured. Ukraine proudly tried to claim after Istanbul that it was going to be a 6000 for 6000 trade but Russia quickly called bullshit and said they’d be happy to give Ukraine all 6000 for whatever Ukraine could scrape together.

   A bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation for Ukraine, but I think they’ll be forced to take them eventually especially since Russia has started releasing lists of names to put a lie to Zelensky’s claims that they’re Russian bodies. I would imagine they’ll slowly release the identities of all 6000 if Ukraine doesn’t comply, and that’s going to upset the families who Ukraine is refusing to pay death benefits, and also force the families to go to a lot of trouble to get their sons and husbands back from Russia directly rather than their government doing it for them.

   That’s the sort of thing that could topple a government, so the unpleasantness of Ukraine accepting their soldiers bodies and paying the families is definitely the smartest move in the end.

2. Doesn’t matter whether money or optics is the reason they won’t accept the bodies, this doesn’t change the fact that zelensky will send Ukrainians to die but won’t bring them home. Wild af

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