Russia on Thursday handed over the remains of 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers to Kyiv and received 19 Russian bodies in return, Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky said. The exchange, conducted at an undisclosed location, follows commitments made during peace talks in Istanbul last month. The hand-over inaugurates a larger tranche of up to 3,000 bodies that President Vladimir Putin pledged on 27 June, supplementing the 6,000 repatriations envisaged in the Istanbul agreements. Moscow had already delivered roughly 4,800 Ukrainian remains in mid-June, including two consecutive shipments of 1,200 each after an initial transfer of 1,212 on 11 June. Regular swaps of prisoners and war dead have become the sole functioning diplomatic channel between the two sides since negotiations in Turkiye stalled over territorial and security demands. While the exchanges provide humanitarian closure for families, they underscore the limited progress toward a cease-fire more than three years into the conflict.