Pairs. Unlikely it was muslims, they only chop off the right hands of thieves.
Communist Chinese selling unidentifiable bodies (or parts) would be my guess.
Check the tissue types vs recent organ recipients.
They look like they’ve been frozen for a while. Remember, there was a pretty good argument made at one time that that KAL airliner that was shot down was actually forced down after being damaged and the adult passengers were killed or gulaged and the children distributed to remote families...
No hands in an 80’s mindset Russian cog would equate to part of the identity obscuring process.