In a highly charged diplomatic clash, Russia has accused Ukraine of committing a form of “self-inflicted genocide” by failing to retrieve the bodies of thousands of fallen Ukrainian soldiers. The accusation comes after a recent attempt by Moscow to return over 6,000 remains in what it labeled a “humanitarian gesture,” only to be met with what Russia describes as a deliberate snub by Kyiv.

The attempted handover was initiated following discussions between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul on June 2, where both sides engaged in tense but necessary talks amid the ongoing war. Moscow, through its top negotiator Vladimir Medinsky, announced that it had unilaterally agreed to repatriate the remains of Ukrainian soldiers as a goodwill measure. However, when the bodies were delivered to an exchange point on the border between Belarus and Ukraine, the Ukrainian delegation reportedly failed to appear.

This development has since been met with a torrent of condemnation from Russian officials, including Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who accused the Ukrainian government of abandoning its own people – both the living and the dead.

“There is no nation or ethnic group in the world that would refuse to bury its soldiers,” Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel. “But there is the Kiev regime, which professes a misanthropic ideology and is committing genocide against its own people.”

Her language was uncompromising, portraying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s........

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