Ukraine returns bodies of 25 servicemen

Another operation was held to hand over the bodies of fallen servicemen. This time, Ukraine returned the corpses of another 25 of its defenders, reported the press service of the Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine.

The operation was carried out with the cooperation of Oleh Kotenko, the commissioner for missing persons, and the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine.

The process of returning the bodies takes place, as the department emphasized, in accordance with the norms of the Geneva Convention.

Norms of the Geneva Convention

It states that dead prisoners of war should be buried in separate graves, unless unavoidable circumstances force them to be buried in a mass grave.

Bodies are cremated only for urgent hygienic needs, taking into account the religion of the deceased or according to the expressed wishes of the deceased in this regard. In the case of cremation, this fact is noted in the death certificate along with an explanation of the reasons.

To ensure that the graves can always be found, all facts and burial places are recorded by the Graves Registration Service, established by the detaining power. Lists of places of burial and data on prisoners of war buried in cemeteries and other places are transferred to the state on which they depended. Responsibility for the care of graves and for the registration of all subsequent movements of bodies rests with the state controlling the territory, if it is a party to the Convention.

These provisions also apply to ashes: the Graves Registration Service must keep them until the fate of the remains is decided in accordance with the wishes of the homeland of the prisoners of war.