Kyiv has said that it had received the bodies of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers killed during battles with Russia, the second such repatriation in three weeks.
The exchange of prisoners of war and war dead has been one of the few areas of cooperation between the two sides since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
"As a result of repatriation activities, the bodies of 909 fallen Ukrainian defenders were returned to Ukraine," the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, a Ukrainian government agency, said on social media.
Russia does not typically announce the return of its bodies or give up-to-date information on the numbers of its troops killed fighting in Ukraine.
But Russian media and military bloggers said 41 bodies of killed Russian soldiers had been returned, citing Shamsail Saraliev, an MP who sits on the parliamentary committee overseeing the offensive.
The exchange came as US-led efforts to bring about a ceasefire between the two sides appears to have stalled.
Tens of thousands on both sides are widely estimated to have been killed, though neither country provides routine updates.
In mid-February, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky told US broadcaster NBC News that more than 46,000 of his soldiers had been killed and around 380,000 wounded.
Russia has not reported on its losses since autumn 2022, when it said fewer than 6,000 soldiers killed.
An ongoing investigation by Mediazona and the BBC's Russian service has identified the names of around 100,000 dead Russian soldiers since the beginning of the war, based on information from publicly available sources.
Ukraine PM to visit US next week for resource deal talks
Ukraine's prime minister will visit Washington next week for talks with top US officials aimed at clinching a long-fraught minerals and resources deal by 26 April, according to a memorandum.
Ukraine and the United States had planned to sign a deal on extracting Ukraine's strategic minerals weeks ago, but a clash between presidents Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky in February temporarily derailed work on the agreement.
Mr Trump wants the deal - designed to give the US royalty payments on profits from Ukrainian mining of resources and rare minerals - as compensation for aid given to Ukraine by his predecessor, Joe Biden.
According to a copy of a one-page "memorandum of intent" signed by both countries, the two sides "aim" to complete discussions by Saturday 26 April and sign the final agreement "as soon as possible".
"Ukrainian Prime Minister (Denys) Shmygal will visit Washington, DC the week of April 21, 2025, to meet with US Treasury Secretary (Scott) Bessent and lend high-level support to the conclusion of technical discussions," the document, published by the Ukrainian government, stated.
"Negotiating teams are expected to report on the progress by April 26, 2025, with the aim of completing discussions by that date and signing as soon as possible," it added.
US officials say boosting American business interests in Ukraine will help deter Russia from future aggression in the event of a ceasefire.
Ukraine is pushing for concrete military and security guarantees as part of any deal to halt the three-year war.
Earlier Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine's first deputy prime minister and economy minister, wrote on social media that the memorandum had been signed.
"We are happy to announce the signing, with our American partners, of a Memorandum of Intent, which paves the way for an Economic Partnership Agreement and the establishment of the Investment Fund for the Reconstruction of Ukraine," she wrote.
A Ukrainian delegation travelled to Washington at the end of last week for negotiations after the Trump administration offered a new, more expansive deal.
Sitting alongside Mr Trump in the Oval Office yesterday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said "we're still working on the details" and that the signing could come by next Friday.
"It's substantially what we'd agreed on previously," he said.
"When the president was here, we had a memorandum of understanding. We went straight to the big deal, and I think it's an 80-page agreement and that's what we'll be signing."
The White House did not respond to a request for further details on the timing and contents of the agreement.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky had said earlier that the two countries could sign the memorandum online later in the day.
"This is a memorandum of intent. And we have positive, constructive intentions," Mr Zelensky told reporters in Ukraine.
He added that the offer to sign the memorandum before the comprehensive deal, which would require ratification in the Ukrainian parliament, had come from the US side.
Earlier Ms Svyrydenko said Ukraine and the US had made significant progress while discussing the agreement, and the memorandum was the first stage to record this.
