MOSCOW, July 8. /TASS/. Ukraine’s refusal to take back the bodies of its service members is without precedent and unparalleled in history, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
"They don’t take back their soldiers: they don't take back their captives, their dead or their wounded. There has never been a structure or a social group in history - let alone a nation - that would refuse to take back their own people," she told the Sputnik radio station.
The diplomat emphasized that "it has always been considered mandatory to retrieve the bodies of one’s fallen warriors from a battlefield in any way - agreements were reached, bodies were recovered, taken away or exchanged."
Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that Kiev had turned down a proposal for intelligence agencies to work on Moscow’s initiative to hand over the bodies of Ukrainian troops killed while fighting for Konstantinovka.