Ukraine said on Wednesday that Russia had returned the bodies of 1,212 soldiers who died fighting Moscow's invasion, part of an agreement between the two sides reached at peace talks last week.

   Two rounds of talks in Istanbul between Russia and Ukraine have failed to yield a breakthrough in ending the war, though.

   Deals to swap prisoners and repatriate the bodies of killed soldiers were the only concrete agreements to come out of the talks.

   On Wednesday, a Ukrainian government agency announced that "the bodies of 1,212 fallen defenders were returned to Ukraine".

   Among the returned soldiers were those killed fighting in Ukraine's Kharkiv, Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, Kyiv said, as well as those who were killed during Ukraine's incursion into Russia's Kursk region. 

   Ukraine said its experts "will identify the deceased as soon as possible".

   Moscow spent days accusing Kyiv of not wanting to collect the bodies that it alleged had been waiting in refrigerated trucks near the border since Saturday.

   Russia said it agreed last week to unilaterally hand over the bodies of 6,000 killed Ukrainian soldiers. Kyiv said it would be an "exchange".

   The two sides also agreed a large-scale prisoner swap -- the first stages of which were completed on Monday and Tuesday.

   Russia has rejected calls for an unconditional ceasefire and is demanding that Ukraine give up large swathes of territory and its bid to join NATO if it wants peace.

   Moscow has also continued to hit Ukrainian cities with missile and drone attacks. 

   The latest overnight wave of strikes early on Wednesday killed three people in Ukraine's northeastern city of Kharkiv.

   Ukraine has responded with its own drone attacks on Russia.