AFU search teams have found almost 500 bodies of missing Ukrainian heroes

"Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion and until April 20 of this year, our military search groups found a little less than half a thousand bodies of our fallen defenders, and a little more than half a thousand bodies of the occupiers were collected and sent to designated storage places," Colonel Volodymyr Liamzin, the head of the Central Department of Civil-Military Cooperation of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said during the round table discussion "Peculiarities of working with soldiers returned from captivity and searching for missing persons," an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

He added that the search groups explored nearly 600 locations.

He noted that search teams of military personnel work in places where searchers from the Office of the Commissioner for Missing Persons cannot reach.

Liamzin also noted that military personnel involved in the performance of such missions undergo appropriate training.

"All specialists of our groups undergo appropriate training, they study the basics of tactical medicine, the basics of mine action in order to prevent emergency situations and save personnel, they study forensic archeology and the norms of international humanitarian law," the Colonel said.

As reported, seven search teams of the Office of the Commissioner for Missing Persons have already made more than 50 trips to the de-occupied territories of Ukraine, exhuming more than 1,000 bodies (remains), belongings, and documents of the killed or the dead.