In all the horrors of this war, the plight of thousands of civilians abducted by Russia is one of the worst, but is in danger of being overlooked.
Warning: This report contains details of torture and sexual abuse
Their fate is not mentioned for instance in Donald Trump’s peace plan currently being wrestled over, let alone any demands they are released by Russia.
But their plight is truly horrific. Ukraine has identified almost 16,000 names of people lost in a gulag of 180 prisons in Russian-held Ukraine and in Russia itself, as far away as Siberia.
It is a war crime to take civilians hostage during a conflict but that has not deterred Vladimir Putin’s regime.
Worse, there is abundant evidence they are being tortured, sexually abused and killed in custody.
Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Nobel Prize-winning Ukrainian human rights lawyer, said: “I interviewed hundreds of people who survived Russian captivity, men and women, mostly civilians, and they told me how they were beaten, raped, smashed into wooden boxes.
“Their fingers were cut, their nails were torn away, their nails were drilled. There were electrical shocks through their genitalia. One woman told me how her eye was dug out with a spoon.”
When the Russians took territory north of Kyiv at the start of their illegal invasion, they came for the men, among them Dmytro Khilyuk.
Apart from a short letter sent from captivity a few months later, his elderly parents have not seen him since.
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‘I just can’t take it anymore’
“We’re old and we’re sick,” his mother Halyna, bedridden after a stroke, told us.
“We’ve been without our only child for four years now, not knowing anything, where he is, how he is.”
She wept as she told us of the agony of living with the uncertainty about their son.
“I just can’t take it anymore. Why is my child suffering like this? It’s been four years. All we get are endless talks, talks, and more talks. And nothing changes. I could die any day… and never see my child again.”
Khilyuk has lost half his weight and most of his teeth
A year ago a fellow prisoner who had shared a cell with Mr Khilyuk was released. He said Mr Khilyuk had lost half his weight and most of his teeth.
Fellow journalist and friend of Mr Khilyuk, Stas Kozluk, told us he was worried about his state of mind.
“We just can’t imagine what can happen with the mind of a human being that’s captured and spends three years in that condition. To be honest, I don’t know how to help him. And that’s the most terrifying thing,” he said.
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Russia releases no information
Ukrainian authorities can only piece together information about the abducted civilians. Mr Kozluk told us those who’ve been detained learn the phone numbers and names of relatives of others they are held with.
Those who are released pass on what information they can.
Russia releases no information about those civilians it is holding illegally, against the rules of war.
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‘The world doesn’t understand’
Thousands of innocent civilians are lost in a hellish archipelago of Russian jails notorious for their evil regime of abuse.
And the world, says Oleksandra Matviichuk, is in danger of forgetting about them.
“I think the world doesn’t understand, first, the cruelty and unhuman conditions in which Ukrainians are held in Russian captivity,” she says.
“Second, they don’t understand that Russia detained not just military, but civilians. And according to the Geneva Convention, they have to be released immediately without any exchanges, without any conditions.”
Diplomatic efforts to end this war grind on fitfully. But there has been very little pressure on Russia to end its illegal abduction of thousands of innocents.
