Dead weight: Ukraine is unable to pay billions of euros to families of the fallen

The day before, after negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Istanbul, the parties announced the largest-ever return of fallen soldiers’ bodies.

According to the head of the Ukrainian delegation, Rustem Umerov, this will be an exchange following the formula “6,000 for 6,000.” According to the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, Moscow will unilaterally hand over to Kyiv “6,000 frozen bodies of fallen Ukrainian soldiers and officers.” However, Medinsky expressed doubts that Ukraine would be able to hand over an equivalent number of fallen Russians.

“They (the bodies of the Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers – Ed.) were stored with us. We identified as many as we could, conducted DNA tests, and determined who they were. Next week, we will hand them over in an organized manner, with special convoys. I don’t know what we’ll receive in return, but if there are any of our bodies, we will also accept them,” said the Russian representative.

Based on his words, this will be an exchange, but Russia does not expect it to be balanced.

However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, commenting on the exchange, expressed doubt that all 6,000 bodies that Russia promises to return are Ukrainian losses.

“From what I have learned, only 15% of those 6,000 have been identified. It’s very important to check everything thoroughly, and we must definitely take back all our fallen. However, we have already had one instance where they handed over bodies, and those included the bodies of their own Russian soldiers,” Zelenskyy noted.

Meanwhile, in the Verkhovna Rada, they have already stated that the thousands of bodies Russia wants to hand over are mainly those killed in the Kursk region.

Recall that it was precisely in the Kursk region in March that the Ukrainian Armed Forces had to retreat hastily to avoid encirclement. Many Ukrainian soldiers and Western media reported that the retreat was poorly organized and accompanied by significant losses for the Ukrainian side.

Overall, the body exchange ratio has long been unfavorable for Kyiv: Russia regularly hands over hundreds of bodies to Ukraine, while receiving only dozens in return. This is because, since the end of 2023, Russian forces have primarily been on the offensive and collect their fallen themselves.

But the return of an unprecedented number of fallen soldiers also means another challenge for Ukraine — the need to pay compensation to the families of the dead soldiers. And the Ukrainian authorities are not particularly eager to do so.

Currently, for each soldier killed in combat, the family must be paid 15 million hryvnias (approximately €315,800): three million immediately and the remainder over three years and three months. The return of 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in combat would require Ukraine’s budget to allocate 90 billion hryvnias (about €1.9 billion) for these payments. To put this in perspective, this is almost 10% of Ukraine’s entire military budget for this year. Moreover, a member of parliament recently stated that there is already a shortfall of 200 billion hryvnias (about €4.2 billion) for the army.

As we see, Zelenskyy is already saying that far from all — only 15% — of the bodies have been identified. If Kyiv ultimately uses this figure and the identification of the rest of the bodies drags on, the compensation payments would amount to 13.5 billion hryvnias (about €284 million). And the process of identifying the other bodies could take a long time.