Itar-Tass - Russia to turn over WWII remains of Italian servicemen
MOSCOW, November 15 (Itar-Tass)- Russia will turn over to Italy the remains of 140 Italian servicemen killed near Stalingrad and Voronezh during World War II.
On November 20 the remains will be turned over with honors to Italian representatives at Chkalovsky aerodrome in the Moscow region, Aide to Russian Air Force commander Alexander Drobyshevsky told Tass. The ceremony will be held for the 17th time. Earlier, similar ceremonies had been organized at Chkalovsky aerodrome eight times, Drobyshevsky said.
The remains of 10,402 Italian servicemen, including 2,799 identified, had been sent back to Italy in 1991- 2006. In 2007, the remains of 140 more Italian servicemen exhumed on the territory of the Volgograd and Voronezh regions, will be turned over. Two of the servicemen exhumed had personal identification signs, and the name of one of them has been established, Drobyshevsky said.
The War Memorials Association and the Italian Commissariat General for honors to heroes killed in World War II conducted the exhumations in the framework of a bilateral agreement on the Status of burial sites of Russian citizens in Italy and Italian citizens in Russia of January 27, 1994.
The Russian War Memorials Association has 2.2 million entries in its data bank about the fate of foreign prisoners of war who stayed on the territory of the former Soviet Union.