Bodies of Russian troops recovered in Kharkiv area

Russian troops were withdrawing from around Ukraine’s second-largest city after bombarding it for weeks, the Ukrainian military said on Saturday.

It said the Russian forces were pulling back from the northeastern city of Kharkiv and focusing on guarding supply routes.

As the troops withdrew, Ukraine forces and officials continued the grim task of recovering the remains of Russian servicemen killed in battle.

At least 41 bodies were recovered from villages near Kharkiv on Saturday, officials said.

Ukrainian soldiers loaded refrigerated train wagons with the remains, ahead of a possible return to Russia.

Forensic experts were on hand to inspect the bodies for means of identification, and to record a cause of death.

Once they completed their tasks, the remains were put into white body bags, before being loaded onto the train.

One Ukraine official on Friday said several hundred bodies of Russian troops were being stored on the trains in the capital and in several other storage trains elsewhere.

An official agreement to transfer the bodies to their homeland remains unresolved.

Kharkiv, which is near the Russian border and only 80 kilometres (50 miles) southwest of the Russian city of Belgorod, has undergone weeks of intense shelling.

The largely Russian-speaking city with a prewar population of 1.4 million was a key military objective earlier in the war, when Moscow hoped to capture and hold major cities.

The withdrawal of Russian troops from Kharkiv came as the grinding battle for the country’s eastern industrial heartland of Donbas continued.

Image: AP