On May 17, 2022, in Maralohan, Ukraine, the bodies of abandoned Russian soldiers lay among their belongings and wreckage. The bodies were taken to an undisclosed location to be exchanged for the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers killed in action and Russian soldiers.

　　On May 17, 2022, in Maralohan, Ukraine, the body of an abandoned Russian soldier lay among his belongings and wreckage. Ukrainian soldiers treating the corpses felt that the smell of death from the Russian soldier's corpse was the smell of victory.

　The morgue on the outskirts of Kharkiv was filled with the thick, sticky stench of decaying human flesh. Under the blazing sun, the corpses of Russian soldiers lay in body bags, their uniforms soaked with bodily fluids. Maggots scraped the skin off the dead Russian soldier's body, exposing his skull.

　On a warm day in early June 2022, Ukrainian soldiers, many with cigarettes dangling from their mouths to mask the stench, carried about 80 or more dead Russian soldiers from refrigerated vehicles to the back of semi-trucks. They were transported to an undisclosed location to be exchanged for the corpses of Ukrainian soldiers who had died in battle.

　Since Russian troops invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Ukrainian military units in Kharkiv in the eastern border region have collected and identified the bodies of hundreds of Russian soldiers killed and abandoned on the battlefield.

　The Ukrainian military has announced that 30,000 Russian soldiers have died since the war began on February 14, 2022, but that figure cannot be confirmed. The Russian military has not provided information on the number of dead since March 25, 2022, when it announced that the war was not a war but a "special military operation" and that only about 1,351 Russian soldiers had died. Russia has been reluctant to take in the dead, and on June 4, 2022, the Ukrainian military officially acknowledged the exchange of bodies for the first time since the war began on February 24. A total of about 320 bodies were exchanged on the front lines in the Zaporizhia region, with both sides announcing that they had gained 160 dead.

　Belligerents are obliged to make every effort to search for, record, and identify the dead left on the battlefield, in accordance with international treaties. Throughout this process, parties to the conflict are also required to maintain the personal dignity of the enemy's dead. It is standard military practice to photograph the dead for record purposes. It is a violation of the Geneva Conventions to disrespect the bodies, yet the line between recording corpses and celebrating murder is quickly blurred under the fog of war.