This year, as part of repatriation efforts, more than 10,000 bodies of Ukrainian servicemen were returned to Ukraine. This was announced by Volodymyr Bilenko, a representative of the search work department of the Central Directorate of Civil-Military Cooperation of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, during a briefing, as reported by UNN.
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In 2025, as part of repatriation efforts, over 10,000 bodies were returned to Ukraine. Search groups of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in accordance with the requirements of current legislation, conduct searches up to the line of combat engagement, i.e., to the gray zone, if the security situation allows. In the temporarily occupied territories, coordination of the negotiation process for searching for missing persons is carried out by the Coordination Headquarters and the joint center under the SBU.
He noted that bodies are being returned from the Bakhmut direction.
As a rule, bodies are returned in a rather terrible state. Primary identification is not possible. Experience shows that identification is carried out based on the results of forensic molecular DNA examination. Then we can understand that, yes, this serviceman went missing in the Bakhmut area and was returned to us.