Due to the Russian invasion, thousands of Ukrainians are considered missing. Their relatives are desperate and trying to get at least some information about them. Volunteers and human rights activists came to the rescue.
Natalya Huzar, together with other women, went to the streets of Kyiv with a photo of her son to get at least some information about his fate. The woman does not hold back her emotions: “I’m sorry for the tears, but every minute you do something, just eat mechanically, but at the same time you wonder if your child ate … You lie down and think, where does your child sleep, and does he sleep in general?”.
According to Oleg Kotenko, Commissioner for Missing Persons under Special Circumstances, more than 7,000 Ukrainian military personnel are considered missing. In order to find at least some signs of what happened in the military, their relatives monitor Russian social networks, hoping that a loved one has been captured.
Often you have to look at the morgue. Often, relatives take DNA tests to identify the bodies. Ruslan Abbasov, director of one of the Kyiv laboratories, said hundreds of DNA samples come to them every day looking for their relatives. According to him, in 3-10 percent of cases, the result is the same. Abbasov said that what is a good result for the laboratory, that is, an opportunity, is the worst news for parents. “For the parents, in fact, it is better that there are no opportunities, because they believe that their child is alive, or in captivity, or will come soon,” said Abbasov.
Find prisoners of war
Russian lawyer Nikolai Polozov worked in 2018 on the return of Ukrainian sailors from captivity in the Russian Federation. Today his team founded the Poshuk.Polon project to find Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russia. Ukrainian and Russian experts are involved in the project, which monitors the possible stay of missing Ukrainian fighters. According to the lawyer, one of the biggest problems is the lack of data on Ukrainian soldiers taken prisoner.
Unlike Ukraine, Russia has not established an information and reference bureau for prisoners of war. This violates the norms of international humanitarian law, in particular, the third Geneva Convention. The Kremlin explained this by saying that Russia is not waging any war. According to Polozov, it is useful for the Russian Federation to hide information about the majority of prisoners of war, because it should not reveal the crimes committed against the Ukrainian military.
“We know that they were tortured, starved and doing other terrible things that we learned from the prisoners who were nevertheless captured under the exchange and released,” said Polozov in a conversation with DW.
Nikolai Polozov believes that most of the hostages will be exchanged, because Russia cannot physically open such a number of criminal cases. There is also no point in keeping thousands of fighters, except for the purpose of preventing them from returning to the front line. The situation in command, in his opinion, will be different. “We are talking about the commanders, about some representatives of the Azov regiment, about some media figures who will make Russian propaganda,” said Polozov. These Ukrainians will need to organize human rights support. It is for this that Polozov’s team has Russian lawyers. According to him, now the only possible way to return the Ukrainian military home is through exchange.
Find Yours
Not only the military, but also civilians are missing. In addition to the state, volunteers are engaged in their search. One of the biggest projects, Know Your Own, was launched by Ukrainian TV presenter Ekaterina Osadchaya. Thousands of relatives of missing civilians turn to the project’s volunteers every month, Osadchaya said. In their work, activists use various sources – databases of evacuees, lists of the wounded in hospitals, lists of people in bomb shelters, local state institutions on the ground, and even the representatives of the so-called “DNR/LNR”. “We are a kind of link. A link that unites people with information, and a link that tries to find people on the ground,” explained the founder of the “Know Your Own” project.
According to Osadchaya, one of the main challenges facing Ukraine are civilians, Ukrainians, in captivity in Russia. This is a challenge, because prisoners of war have an internationally secured status – unlike civilians. “How can the authorities change the military and civilian? If a man or a woman is military, then it is clear how to exchange a military for a military man. But how to exchange a civilian? “Osadchaya said.
According to the activist, some Ukrainian civilians captured by the Russians are forced to confess that they are supposed to be soldiers. “We have evidence of this, we have interviews with people, I have an interview with a mother who is dependent on her civilian son from captivity. A man was also in captivity, who was exchanged and said that yes, it is true, ” said in a conversation with DW Osadchaya. In his opinion, the Russians do this to replenish their exchange fund.
According to Kateryna Osadchaya, there is also information that captured Ukrainian civilians are kept in inhumane conditions, sometimes in the same cell as Russian detainees. This was also confirmed by Nikolai Polozov: “As far as I know, some civilians are kept without trial or investigation at all in Russian pre-trial detention centers.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), responding to a DW request about the situation of Ukrainian civilians in captivity in Russia, noted that “they do not comment on individual cases and never provide a public assessment of such cases.” At the same time, the representative of the ICRC, in a conversation with DW, noted that the situation with civilians in captivity is generally difficult, since the issue of the release of civilians from captivity is not prescribed by international humanitarian law, unlike military liberation. This means it is unclear under what rules civilians will be returned from captivity. The ICRC representative recommended that families whose close civilians were captured and killed as soldiers should contact the Red Cross.
Pull all the strings
Despite all the difficulties, the exchange process between Ukraine and Russia is taking place, and the search for the missing continues. Only within the framework of the project “Know Your Own”, in the past month, it was possible to find about fifty people. Ekaterina Osadchaya advises: if you have lost a loved one, you need to “pull all the strings” – inform the police, the National Information Bureau, contact the call center of the Commissioner for Missing Persons, work with volunteers . “And do not lose hope for the return of a loved one,” Osadchaya emphasized.
Source: korrespondent
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.