At the International Summit on the Support of Ukraine, which was held in Kyiv in February, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that an important step Russia could take towards ending the war is the release of all Ukrainian prisoners. According to human rights activists, more than 16,000 Ukrainian nationals are being held in Russian captivity. Up to half of them are civilians captured in the occupied territories and sent to Russian prisons on charges of “terrorism” or “espionage.” Ninety percent of those caught by Russian security forces are tortured. In violation of international conventions, Russia does not notify the International Red Cross about captured Ukrainians. Some European countries monitor the issue of Ukrainian hostages, but the international community is not taking any action to secure their release, human rights activists complain.
On the morning of Aug. 13, 2022, close to twenty armed men burst into the apartment of 32-year-old Artem Baranov in Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka. Artem and his friend, who was in the apartment during the raid, were accused of “spotting for the AFU.” During the arrest, the men threatened Baranov that they would “slaughter him and take him out in pieces” so that “no one would be able to put him back together.”
Artem was denounced by another local, Viktor Kushnarenko, who had been caught by Russian soldiers while photographing the aftermath of a shelling. Kushnarenko was also suspected of spying for Ukraine. Hoping to get off, he began to offer the names of his “accomplices,” including Baranov.
The occupiers promised Artem's relatives that they would release him within a few days. Instead, he was transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp in annexed Sevastopol under the pretext that he “posed a threat to the Russian armed forces.” From occupied Crimea, the Ukrainian was sent to Russia's Volgograd Region and then to SIZO-1, a pre-trial detention center in Rostov Region, where, according to a cellmate who returned to Ukraine during an exchange, prisoners were regularly tortured, beaten, and forced to sing the Russian anthem and patriotic songs on camera.
In February 2023, Russian authorities opened an espionage case against Baranov. A year later, the court sentenced him to 10.5 years in prison.
Artem Baranov's story is one of thousands of cases from Ukraine's occupied territories, whose residents are abducted en masse by Russian security forces.
Ukraine’s ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets estimated that as of December 2024, more than 16,000 Ukrainian nationals were being held in Russian captivity. Little is known about their fates.
Ukrainian human rights activists managed to trace and locate only a small proportion of the captives. According to a report by the Sova Expert Group and the Center for Civil Liberties, after Feb. 24, 2022, 543 Ukrainian citizens were criminally prosecuted in Russia — 307 of them civilians. These numbers reflect only the cases that can be validated beyond any doubt.
Most Ukrainians are prosecuted on charges of espionage (37% of cases), acts of terror (26%), murder (15%), and the organization of an armed group (10%). Before Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian territories in the fall of 2022, some captives were prosecuted for “acts of international terrorism.”
“The Russian regime is interested in demonstrating the 'threat' [in Ukraine] for propaganda purposes: 'Look how many dangerous terrorists there are! The war will be long, the fight will be merciless,'” Michael Savva, an expert at the Center for Civil Liberties, explains to The Insider.
Most of the abducted Ukrainians are held in incommunicado detention: without confirmation of arrest, and without access to phone calls or forms of correspondence. Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna, whose death in captivity became known in October 2024, had also been held incommunicado in a pre-trial detention center. Security forces kidnapped her in April 2023, but the Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed her detainee status and allowed a single call — to her father — only in August 2024.
Savva notes that contrary to its international obligations, Russia does not notify the International Committee of the Red Cross about the Ukrainians it has captured and, in contravention of the Geneva Convention, has not established a National Information Bureau, instead offering a Ministry of Defense hotline as the only source for those seeking information about possible captives. If Ukrainians are captured on the battlefield, in the occupied territory, or during a security screening, their cases are not reported.
Contrary to its international obligations, Russia does not notify the International Committee of the Red Cross about captured Ukrainians
Abductees' families do not receive any information about their loved ones’ status or whereabouts until the beginning of the criminal proceedings. Up until then, Russian authorities can, at best, confirm that a person has been detained “for opposing the special military operation” — but the authorities refuse to disclose captives’ location “for security reasons.”
Russian authorities hold abducted Ukrainians in a wide-ranging network of prison facilities on both national and occupied territory. According to the Associated Press, the occupied territories were home to at least 63 detention facilities in 2023, and the government plans to open 25 more penal colonies and six detention centers by 2026. According to a UN report from July 2023, Ukrainian prisoners were being kept in 37 facilities in Russia and Belarus and 124 in the occupied territories.
Since then, the Center for Civil Liberties has expanded the list to include 182 places of forced detention of Ukrainians, and AP journalists managed to confirm the existence of at least 40 Russian penal colonies used for the detention of Ukrainian nationals.
Before being sent to prison, captured Ukrainians endure abuse in detention centers. One of the most notorious for its torturous conditions is SIZO-2 in Taganrog. In the past, the facility was used for detained teenagers and women with children, but after the beginning of the full-scale war, it was repurposed for keeping captive Ukrainians, as independent investigative outlet in exile Mediazona reported in detail.
Ukrainians call the Taganrog SIZO-2 “hell on earth,” and prisoners' relatives have reported cases of electrical torture and beatings so severe they resulted in fractures. Sometimes prisoners would be fed nothing but boiled cabbage for days on end, resulting in severe weight loss. The pre-trial detention center offers no medical services, leaves prisoners' complaints unanswered, does not deliver food and hygiene parcels, and does not allow visitation for lawyers or priests.
A March 2024 report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights states that 90% of Ukrainian civilians and 84% of military personnel have been subjected to torture during capture and detention. The document reports that all recently released prisoners were subjected to beatings, electrical torture, and prolonged solitary confinement. Sexualized violence against both women and men is also common.
The trials of Ukrainians have been streamlined both in the occupied territories and inside Russia. As the Memorial Human Rights Center told The Insider, since June 2023, the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don has taken 195 such cases and issued 117 verdicts.
The trials of Ukrainians have been streamlined both in the occupied territories and inside Russia
The largest such case was the trial of Azov servicemen, who stood accused of “organizing terrorist activity” and “attempted violent coup.” The defendants totaled 24 people, nine of them women. The case went to trial in July 2023.
The only connection between the defendants is the fact of their service in the Ukrainian army — often in different years. Some never even directly participated in combat operations. Russian journalists dubbed the trial a “cooks' case” because most of the female defendants had served in the Azov Battalion merely in the capacity of kitchen staff. At the sessions, the prosecution argued that “The mess-hall workers carried out terrorist activities.”
All the soldiers on trial were taken in March-April 2022: kidnapped from their homes, captured at Azovstal, or detained during security screening while trying to leave Mariupol. Their lawyers stressed the absurdity of the terrorism charges, as the Russian authorities had not recognized Azov as a terrorist organization until August 2022, almost six months after the arrests. Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs and National Guard, whose former officers often end up tried as terrorists, have never been on this list at all. Defense attorneys also pointed out that under the 1949 Geneva Convention, to which Russia is a party, combatants cannot be held criminally liable for the mere fact of military service.
Russian authorities labeled the Azov Battalion a terrorist organization six months after defendants in the Azov case were arrested
The defendants in the “cooks' case” were tortured in order to obtain the testimony needed by the prosecution. In July 2024, one of the defendants, 53-year-old Oleksandr Ishchenko of Mariupol, was reported to have died in custody. According to autopsy results, the cause of death was shock due to multiple rib fractures and “thoracic blunt force trauma.” The case against Ishchenko was subsequently dismissed.
Vaskov is listed as a member of the Russian Union of Journalists. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he has been vocal in propaganda publications. The historian called Ukraine the “Fourth Reich” and characterized AFU servicemen as “a selection of SS officers.” He claimed that Ukraine was “created at Lenin's insistence” and that Kharkiv residents were fined for speaking Russian in the 1920s. In 2023, Vaskov co-authored a monograph on “Ukrainianism” as “a constructed environment that Ukrainians believe in and consider part of their life and ideology.” At a lecture at Donetsk State University, he discussed the “historical experience of de-Nazification.”
One illustrative Ukrainian case was the trial of the “Kherson Nine”: a group of Kherson residents kidnapped by Russian troops in the summer of 2022. The group consists of two AFU servicemen, Denys Lialka and Serhii Kovalskyi, along with seven civilian hostages: door installer Serhii Ofitserov, Red Cross volunteer Yurii Kaiov, former head of the transportation department of the Kherson City Council Oleh Bohdanov, former Kherson customs officer Yurii Tavozhnianskyi, car mechanic Serhii Heidt, sales manager Serhii Kabakov, and entrepreneur Kostiantyn Reznik. Each of them faces life imprisonment on charges of “international terrorism” and “organizing a terrorist group.” The Southern District Military Court began hearing the case in the spring of 2024.
One of the defendants, Serhii (Sergei) Ofitserov, is a Russian citizen. Born in 1976 in Kherson, as a child he moved with his family to Kamchatka and then to Siberia, where at the age of 16 he received a Russian passport. Four years later, Serhii returned to Kherson with his mother. As his father Hennadiy told The Insider, Ofitserov had a residence permit and registered address in Ukraine, worked and paid taxes, and did not apply for a Ukrainian passport because not having one did not significantly affect his life in the country. However, issues of identity obtained a new urgency in his family in 2014, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of the war in Donbas. “We began to identify ourselves as a nation that came under attack,” says Hennadiy Ofitserov.
“We began to identify ourselves as a nation that came under attack”
In 2018, Serhii began the process of changing his citizenship from Russian to Ukrainian, but the procedure dragged on until the start of the full-scale invasion. During the full-scale war, Serhii stayed in occupied Kherson and often visited his father. On Aug. 3, 2022, people in civilian clothes burst into Hennadiy's apartment. Threatening the father and son with a gun, they checked the contents of Serhii's cell phone, handcuffed him, put a bag over his head, and took him to his apartment. There, without any witnesses, they searched the premises, seized a computer, and took Serhii into custody.
On the same day, Ofitserov's nephew, Serhii Kovalskyi, was grabbed off the street on his way to the store. His mother, Iryna Kovalska, suspects that her son was taken due to his past service in the AFU: “At checkpoints, people with assault rifles stopped every passer-by, asked for passports, and checked them against lists of names. In Kherson, they had stolen lists of policemen, servicemen, and ATO [Anti-Terrorist Operation in Donbas] fighters.”
For a long time, Iryna Kovalska and Hennadiy Ofitserov did not know where their relatives had been taken. Through connections, they eventually found out that the two men were being kept in the basement of the Kherson Region Department of Internal Affairs. At the trial, Ofitserov said that he had been subjected to electrical torture: “My whole body went into a spasm. They said ‘tell us,’ and when I asked ‘tell you what,’ I received a new discharge.” After a week of abuse, Serhii agreed to “sign whatever they say.” He did not know the contents of the documents the law enforcement officers ordered him to sign.
Serhii Kovalskyi was taken to his home several times for searches. “When they brought him, he was dirty, stinking, covered in blood. Sasha, his wife, begged them to let him shower, and in the bathroom, she saw that he was all blue. She asked him what they'd done to him, and he said electric shocks. They also pummeled his kidneys to the point that he peed blood,” his mother said. During the search, Serhii's wife was also forced to sign blank sheets; she was given no explanation as to why.
Russian soldiers employed not only physical torture but also psychological abuse: they forced prisoners to play “Russian roulette,” imitated a firing squad, hid the detainees in the torture room and told the others that they had been executed, and interrogated them about their patriotic feelings to the sounds of the Russian national anthem and Soviet songs.
Russian soldiers employed not only physical torture but also psychological abuse: they forced prisoners to play “Russian roulette,” imitated a firing squad, and lied to prisoners about executing others
Also in August 2022, the prisoners were taken separately to the city to film staged videos of their arrests. Later they were forced to feature in a story for Russian television. “We were seated at a table with microphones and video equipment on it, and uniformed men warned me not to do anything 'funny.' I was asked questions from the questionnaire. I answered as I was ordered, and the correspondents were very pleased,” defendant Kostiantyn Reznik told the court.
In the Russia-1 broadcast about a “group of Ukrainian saboteurs,” operatives blow up a booby-trapped car, discover kilograms of explosives during a search, and “detain” and “interrogate” the suspects. According to the propagandists' version, Serhii Kabakov was tasked with placing a fuse in the Kherson occupation official's jet ski, and Kostiantyn Reznik was responsible for setting off the explosion when the intended victim was in range. Iryna Kovalska notes that absolutely everything in the video is fake:
“The arrest dates are all wrong. They combined them into a fictional group of nine: the two Serhiis are relatives, but they had never seen the others. [The propagandists] are laying it on too thick. What kind of fool would buy such a story?”
The Kherson residents were kept in the basement for about two months before they finally agreed at gunpoint to sign blank sheets of paper. In October, they were taken to the Simferopol pre-trial detention center to face charges of international terrorism and attempted murder of Oleksiy Kovalev, an employee of the occupation administration of Kherson Region, at the instruction of the Security Service of Ukraine. Kovalev was indeed killed, but on Aug. 28, at a time when all of the defendants were in custody. On paper, the dates of their arrests were aligned with the television shoot.
In January-February 2024, when the case was brought before a military court, the Kherson Nine were transferred to SIZO-1 in Rostov. Hennadiy Ofitserov learned about the move from his son's letters: “The sewage system leaks, the cells are overcrowded, housing up to thirty people instead of ten. The humidity is such that the paper gets damp and it's impossible to write on it. They don't take us out for walks.”
At the trial, it turned out that the prosecution's main witness was Yuri Kovalev, the brother of the official killed in 2022. Serhii Kabakov and Kostiantyn Reznik had performed construction work in Kovalev's house in the past, and a pre-war altercation could have motivated Kovalev’s denunciation against them, the defendants believe.
None of the nine defendants pleaded guilty. “It took three things to turn a prisoner of war into an international terrorist: pen, paper, and a gun to the head,” Kovalskyi said in court.
The state prosecutor attached written confessions to the case file, along with video recordings of oral confessions and of the suspects’ arrests. The case file also included investigators’ reports, which were dated to August 2022. The defense considers these reports illegitimate, because according to the law “On Operative Investigative Activity,” investigative actions must be limited to the territory of Russia, and Kherson Region did not “become a part of it” in the eyes of Russian authorities until Oct. 4, 2022. The defense categorized the defendants' arrest and placement in custody as a kidnapping of Ukrainian citizens.
Serhii Kovalskyi has a medical condition called cerebral hydrocephalus, and his mother has been trying unsuccessfully to get care for him. Iryna emphasizes that the International Committee of the Red Cross has done nothing to help her son: “In response to the provided evidence of torture and horrible conditions of imprisonment, they say that they cannot do anything due to their neutrality. Their responses never changed in three years.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross has refused to help captured Ukrainians, citing “neutrality”
Since November 2022, Hennadiy Ofitserov has appealed to both Ukrainian and international authorities: “The UN replied that if I already know where my son is and he has a lawyer, there is nothing else they can do. And the Red Cross keeps telling us to wait.” Ofitserov says he is doing his best to ensure that his son and the Kherson Nine are not forgotten, drawing the attention of international human rights organizations, journalists, and Ukrainian politicians to the case.
Residents of the occupied Ukrainian territories are also put on trial for making public statements in support of Ukraine or against the Russian authorities.
Mykola Holubov of Berdiansk was detained in December 2023. According to the investigation, he posted comments in support of Azov and the Freedom of Russia Legion. The case took five sessions, and in July 2024, the Rostov court sentenced Holubov to five years in prison.
Oksana Pavlenko, an entrepreneur from Melitopol, was tried over a comment calling for the “mass burning of Russian military facilities and elimination of Russian citizens,” which she allegedly posted in May 2024. However, Ukrainian publications report that Pavlenko was detained in the summer of 2023 and has been in pre-trial detention ever since. In September 2024, Russia placed her on its list of extremists and terrorists, and two months later, a military court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced her to five years in a penal colony for “publicly justifying terrorism.”
In August 2024, the prosecutor's office of the self-proclaimed “Luhansk People's Republic” submitted a criminal case against Luhansk resident Anna Atoyan to the same Rostov military court. The investigation believes that in May 2023, she wrote a comment calling on the AFU to carry out terrorist attacks inside Russia. A woman with the same personal data is listed as an associate professor of the Department of Document and Archival Studies of Luhansk State Pedagogical University. In June 2024, Anna Atoyan was placed on the list of extremists and terrorists.
In Ukraine, the release of hostages is handled by the Commission on Establishing the Fact of Deprivation of Personal Freedom as a Result of Armed Aggression. Prisoners' relatives often criticize the work of the commission.
Hennadiy Ofitserov was among those who suffered from the work — or lack thereof — of this agency: “I sent them a package of documents, and they said: 'Your son is not a Ukrainian national. Not our problem.'” The enraged father hopes to set a precedent.
According to Ofitserov, other relatives often complain about the commission's groundless refusals to recognize the prisoner's status, which effectively deprives the prisoner of the right to assistance from the state. Human rights activists have also pointed out the problem. Hennadiy emphasizes that some would-be petitioners cannot even address the commission:
“I'm more or less savvy, but if you take a woman of age, living in the village, who has a son missing — there's little she can do. And even if she gets help preparing the paperwork for the commission, what will she do when she gets a rejection?”
To protect the rights of prisoners, their loved ones have created the “Association of Relatives of Political Prisoners of the Kremlin.” The head of the association, Ihor Kotelianets, explains the most common reasons for its refusals to recognize the status of a prisoner: “Often [relatives of prisoners] receive refusals due to lack of information. But neither the lawyers nor the commissioners know what documents are needed. The law doesn't explain it, and neither do the bylaws.”
Once a prisoner has been convicted and starts serving their sentence, the Geneva Conventions no longer apply to them, human rights activist Mikhail Savva says. “We can expect the release of prisoners of war and incommunicado civilians, but we will need a different mechanism for securing the release of those already serving sentences,” he explains.
Once a prisoner has been convicted and starts serving their sentence, the Geneva Conventions no longer apply to them
In December 2024, Russian ombudsman Tatiana Moskalkova released a list containing the names of 630 captives whom Ukraine “refuses to take back.” Michael Savva notes that for the first time, the list includes 14 civilians. The human rights activist considers this to be the first official admission of a war crime by the Russian authorities: they are using Ukrainian civilians as hostages in an attempt to bring back their soldiers from captivity.
The international response to Russia taking Ukrainian hostages remains fragmented and weak, says Evgeniya Chirikova, a Russian human rights activist and former opposition politician. Together with her associates, Chirikova has been trying for years to draw the attention of European politicians and Russian activists to the problem. Despite regular UN reports on torture and mistreatment of captive Ukrainians, no systemic measures have followed. Only certain countries, such as Estonia, Finland, and France, pay notable attention to the issue of torture and imprisonment of Ukrainians.
“This is a real disaster. Russia has built a system of terror against Ukrainians, military and civilian alike. All that matters is their nationality. We need a public discussion in free countries about the terror happening in the occupied territories,” Chirikova says.
To draw attention to the problem of Ukrainian hostages and their release, the “People First!” International Campaign was launched, advocating for the release of individuals forcibly held as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The main goal of the campaign, according to Mikhail Savva, is to prevent the issue of the hostages' release from getting short shrift in possible negotiations: “We realize such a threat exists, as modern politics is very profit-oriented. People and human rights are far from being anyone's top priority.”
So far, more than 40 organizations have joined the initiative, including the Kharkiv Human Rights Group, the Moscow Helsinki Group, and the Memorial Human Rights Center. After the election of Donald Trump, the “People First!” website posted an appeal: “We urge the new US administration along with all international bodies and governments involved in or having influence on negotiations urgently to address these acute humanitarian issues.” Savva adds that the campaign is advocating an all-for-all exchange of prisoners of war from both sides and the unconditional release of Ukrainian civilians.
Chirikova believes calls for exchanges and negotiations are not enough to solve the problem of abductions of Ukrainians: “The only way to stop terror is to liberate the occupied territories. We need F-35 [fighter jets], not negotiations.” Savva at least partially agrees: “One does not preclude the other. It is necessary to increase arms deliveries and achieve a victory for Ukraine on the battlefield, as this will improve its negotiating position.”