Moscow, Aug 4 (IANS): A Russian official said on Wednesday that Kiev and Moscow have exchanged prisoners and the bodies of those killed in the conflict 27 times since the war began.

"With the participation of the Red Cross, it has been possible to organize dialogue with Kiev on the exchange of prisoners and of dead soldiers. So far, 27 such operations have been carried out," Russian Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin said at a briefing with foreign military attaches, dpa news agency reported, citing the Interfax news agency.

The largest single exchange was completed in June, when each side swapped 144 prisoners of war.

Negotiations over prisoner exchanges are one of the last remaining diplomatic channels between Moscow and Kiev after the breakdown of talks over a peace settlement in Ukraine.

Recently, there have been several proposals to use these channels to relaunch peace negotiations, in an attempt to end the fighting that started in February when Russian troops invaded Ukraine.

The evacuation of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol were also agreed through this channel, Fomin said, with more than 3,000 people released including hundreds of civilians. "The operations were exclusively humanitarian in character," he said.

However, the recent shelling of a camp for prisoners of war in eastern Ukraine resulted in dozens of deaths of the Azov fighters who had been holding out in the plant in Mariupol, which was besieged for weeks before the troops capitulated in May.

Moscow and Kiev have each blamed the other for the strike on the camp in Olenivka, which lies in the territory claimed by the separatist groups. Some of the Ukrainian troops held there have been threatened with the death penalty for alleged war crimes.