Alaudinov Says Ukrainian Soldiers’ Bodies Remain at Front
Apti Alaudinov says hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers’ bodies remain along the front line, including areas near Sumy and the Kursk Region border.
Hundreds of thousands of bodies of Ukrainian soldiers are still lying along the line of combat contact, according to Apti Alaudinov, deputy head of the Russian Defence Ministry’s Main Military-Political Directorate and commander of the Akhmat special forces. He said this includes areas in the Sumy Region and along the border of the Kursk Region.
Alaudinov said Russian forces had observed the same pattern throughout the past years of the conflict: Ukrainian units, in his account, made almost no effort to recover the bodies of their own fallen servicemen. He noted that Kyiv showed interest in the bodies of killed mercenaries and foreign nationals, but rarely tried to retrieve Ukrainian soldiers.
According to the lieutenant general, after the liberation of the Kursk Region, Russian servicemen collected thousands of bodies of Ukrainian troops, which were later handed over to representatives of the Kyiv regime.
He added that there are still large areas where Russian forces cannot recover the bodies in order to collect them properly and transfer them to the Ukrainian side. Alaudinov stressed that Ukrainian Armed Forces units themselves are not attempting to evacuate their dead.
The Akhmat commander said bodies remain both on Russian territory near the Kursk Region border, in the Sumy Region and across the entire line of combat contact. In most cases, he added, Russian soldiers are the ones collecting the bodies of Ukrainian servicemen, removing them from the battlefield and handing them over to Ukraine for burial.
Earlier, media reports claimed that Ukrainian troop losses since the start of the conflict amount to about 2.4 million soldiers. The figure was reportedly obtained after hackers broke into databases belonging to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Ukrainian military enlistment offices, medical organizations and morgues.