Many of the 563 Ukrainian service members lost their lives in and around the eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Bakhmut.

Others were returned from Russian territory.

Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said on Friday: “We managed to repatriate 320 bodies of defenders killed in the Donetsk sector and 89 fallen soldiers from the Bakhmut sector.

“We also managed to recover 154 bodies from morgues in Russia.”

The repatriated bodies are now waiting to be identified before being returned to their families.

Ukrainian state news agency Ukrinform reported that the recovery effort was the result of cooperation between various national and government agencies, including the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights.

The International Committee of the Red Cross was also involved in the process, Ukrinform reported.

Moscow and Kyiv have conducted several exchanges of bodies of killed military personnel and prisoners of war since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The last significant swap took place on October 19, when Kyiv recovered the bodies of 501 members of its armed forces.