Returning bodies and swapping POWs

As we had expected, the Ukrainian bureaucracy quickly put to rest the Russian media narrative that Kyiv would be financially crippled by compensation payments because of the massive number of bodies returned by Russia.

On June 18, Ukrainian Internal Affairs Minister Ihor Klymenko announced that identifying the bodies handed over by Russia would take more than a year.
There are objective reasons for this. The remains include both intact bodies and fragments. The volume involved likely requires new facilities for storage and forensic processing.

Moreover, even preliminary analysis revealed the presence of at least 20 Russian soldiers among the remains, with some bodies even with Russian passports in their pockets.

While Ukrainian officials, all the way up to President Zelensky, have accused Russia of staging provocations and inflating the number of Ukrainian losses (Klymenko said “the enemy is trying to do everything to make it harder for us and slow things down”), it is far more likely a case of routine carelessness by the Russian military. With so many bodies, mistakes are unavoidable.

As for POWs, there have been six swaps so far. Media reports state these are enlisted soldiers and sergeants, including those who are seriously wounded.

The numbers involved have not been disclosed, which has surprised even some Russian voenkory. Videos show small groups of soldiers, up to 40 men, around buses or in them. But in some videos, you can see the number of buses in the column – four are visible, suggesting around 150-160 men are coming home in each swap.

Altogether, about 1,000 of the stated 2,500 have been returned so far.

Many look older and have obvious signs of starvation and torture. The before-and-after pictures of Territorial Defense Forces soldier Oleksandr Strafun, who was taken prisoner in Mariupol, have gone viral on social media. He has lost so much weight that he is now unrecognizable. In an interview, his wife said the former electrician, who had worked at the Ilyich Steel Works in Mariupol, had lost 50 kilograms and seven centimeters in height (he had a hunch due to beatings sustained while in Russian captivity).

The release of such prisoners sheds light on the scale of the tragedy that unfolded for all the Ukrainian forces defending Mariupol in the early days of the invasion.

Previously, Ukrainian propaganda focused on the Azov Brigade’s heroism in Mariupol, and the government seemed to prioritize efforts to bring home Azov Brigade soldiers, who had held out at the Azovstal steel plant for more than three months before surrendering.

For reasons that remain unclear (possibly due to a violation by Ukraine of previous agreements concerning released brigade commanders), the Russian authorities have refused to include Azov leaders in the current POW swaps. In any case, now hundreds of other Mariupol defenders, unaffiliated with the controversial unit but no less involved in resisting the Russian assault, have now come out of the shadows.

Front-line situation

Overall, the front-line situation remains stable, even as Russian voenkory have been focusing on small advances around Kostyantynivka, in the central section of the front line.

A notable development that emerged in early June and has since solidified is the regular appearance, after a lengthy hiatus, of Russian armored columns on the battlefield.

Ukrainian forces, for their part, have recently stepped up their use of air power to strike Russian positions on the battlefield and in the near rear. This comes after a Ukrainian F-16 shot down a Russian fighter jet in Korenevsky District, Kursk Region, two weeks ago. Since then, Ukrainian pilots appear to be less deterred by the presence of Russian aircraft near the front line.

Heavy fighting continues around the town of Tyotkino in Kursk Region. This week, Ukrainian Commander in Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a long interview that Ukrainian forces control 90 square kilometers of Russian territory in that area and thus are tying down 10,000 Russian troops (out of a total of 665,000 deployed on the front line, according to his information).

The situation on the Sumy front appears to have stabilized for the Ukrainian army. Russian airborne troops involved in the offensive have lost momentum after taking significant losses, as documented by Ukrainian drones.

Russian missile strikes intensifying

Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine continue, clearly overwhelming the country’s air defense capacity. The strikes on June 17 and June 23 were particularly large (the first involving 472 drones and missiles and the second 368).

The strikes are increasingly hitting Ukrainian military-industrial infrastructure, while each strike has hit at least one residential apartment building. In the most recent strike, two buildings of educational institutions and one “sensitive facility” in Kyiv alone were set ablaze. Other sites in cities across Kyiv Region were seriously damaged, as well.

Nevertheless, residents of the capital, unlike Israelis, rarely go to the bomb shelters. A brief survey conducted by your author via Facebook offers some insights as to why.

Basements in the city’s ubiquitous multistory residential buildings are often too shallow, and sheltering there would likely leave residents buried in rubble or worse in the case of a missile strike. The only real, large bomb shelters are the underground parking garages of modern apartment complexes (which can still fit only residents of these complexes, however) and metro stations (which are relatively few). Moreover, after three years of air raid sirens in the city, most residents would rather stay in bed than spend night after night out of the house.

One Kyiv-based acquaintance of your author described a conversation on the night of June 23: “yesterday, S. and I argued about whether to go up to the 25th floor or go down. He was for going down, I for going up – less rubble higher up, if it happens. In the end, we did not go anywhere. S. crawled into the hallway during the missile strike, I heard. I did not even bother getting up. There is no way the whole building, even with the three elevators, could reach a bomb shelter.”

When missiles get through, there are many victims. On June 17, a Russian missile destroyed the upper floors of a nine-story apartment building on Vaclav Havel Boulevard, where three defense firms are located. Twenty-three people were killed. Though a day of mourning was declared in Kyiv, no changes to the city’s bomb shelter system were announced, nor did it seem to lead to changes in people’s behavior. Another strike on June 23 hit the entrance to a building, killing nine more people.

Ukraine hopes for a quick expansion of its interceptor drone production, with German financial support. There would be dedicated units created to operate them closer to Ukraine’s eastern and southern borders. These units are tasked with taking out incoming Russian Shahed drones at high altitudes. Though the Ukrainian army already has such interceptor drones, the current supply is limited.

Yet the threat posed by Russian Iskander missiles remains unresolved. They are frequently used to strike cities in eastern and southern Ukraine. On June 24, four of these missiles struck Dnipro during the day, killing 19 people, injuring more than 200 and causing a lot of destruction – including a passenger train from Odesa passing close to where the missiles impacted.

Even if Ukraine had a large number of Patriot interceptor missile batteries, it would not be enough to intercept Russian Iskander missiles. But Ukraine currently does not have the ability to deploy batteries even just around its major cities. That would require significant assistance from the US, which is not forthcoming.