Ukrainian civilians abducted by Russian forces

Mykyta Horban chokes up. "Give me a moment," he says, taking a long pause. "I'm sorry. It's still very hard."

He proceeds to talk about what he experienced as a prisoner in a Russian-run jail. His gaze is empty, fixed at the ceiling and floor of a conference room in the European Parliament in Brussels.

A Lithuanian member of the European Parliament, Petras Austrevicius, has invited Horban and other victims of Russia's invasion of Ukraine to Belgium to share their accounts.

"Two years ago, Russians came to our village in Ukraine. They took me and my father as prisoners, interrogated us, tortured us," Horban recounts. "They broke my fingers with a screwdriver."

He describes how he and his father were abducted to the Kursk region. To this day, he says he doesn't know why they were taken — they never received any charges.

Horban talks about how his legs were injured during his abduction, leaving him barely able to walk. In Kursk, he says they were forced to sleep outdoors in the freezing cold without any shoes. His frozen toes were later amputated in a prison.

"They let me go because of my injuries," Horban believes. He was part of an exchange for Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine. After six weeks, he was able to return to his home village.

And his father? "We still don't know where he is," Horban answers softly. "Now what?" he asks.

At least 1,500 kidnapped

Olha Reshetylova, head of the Ukrainian Media Initiative for Human Rights, is trying to find answers to that very question. Her organization has been fighting for Ukrainian civilians taken prisoner by Russian forces.

She has been able to track the whereabouts of about 1,500 individuals —"civilian hostages" as she calls them.

Her organization isn't in contact with most of them, Reshetylova admits. Sometimes, she explains, they learn about detainees' fates through the accounts of those who were released.

These individuals are arbitrarily detained and locked away, without formal charges, without formal proceedings, Reshetylova continues. Most of them are kept onRussian-held Ukrainian territory, she says, while others are brought to camps in Russia.

But Reshetylova believes that the actual figure of Ukrainians detained is much higher. In most cases, nobody ever learns what happened.

Not prisoners of war

Austrevicius supports Reshetylova's organization, and wants to raise awareness for disappeared Ukrainians with events in Brussels and on-site visits.

"Those people exist," he told DW in Brussels. "We should not deny this category of civilian hostages, who are taken by the Russian occupiers. They have to be remembered."

"We have to fight for their destiny and we have to raise this issue in any official meeting where Russian officials take part."

Referring to the Hamas-led attack in Israel on October 7 last year, he added that the Ukrainian hostages "remind me of the Israeli hostages who were taken by Hamas."

"Russians were already doing this for years," he said with reference to the practice of disappearances that spiked in 2014 after Russia's illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula. "This means unbearable pain for family members."

Fearing for her husband's life

Olha Babych, wife of the abducted Oleksandr Babych, says she didn't even have a chance to say goodbye. Russian soldiers kidnapped her husband, the mayor of Hola Prystan in Kherson, two years ago. They captured him in the town hall, where they are said to have held and tortured him for several days.

She remembers he scribbled his final note to her on a piece of toilet paper: "I love you. I don't know what's going to happen next."

Since then, she says she has neither spoken with him nor received a letter or even a chat message from him. She received the first sign of life from him in the summer of 2022.

She eventually learned that her husband was being kept isolated in a Crimean detention center. According to accounts, he had not been charged, and no lawyer could see him.

Babych says that her husband had organized resistance against the Russian occupiers during the first months of the war. That's why she believes they wanted to silence him.

The European Union, she hopes, can offer support, and perhaps even help negotiate a prisoner exchange. That's why she says she's turned to the public with her story, even though she knows she's putting herself and her family in danger of being targeted by Russian security forces.

"You can't just stand by and watch," Babych said in Brussels, pointing a finger at European citizens.

EU needs to apply more pressure

Reshetylova's media initiative is now calling for for an international, UN-led mission to negotiate the release of the remaining civilian hostages.

"We hope that the EU will issue more personal sanctions for those that committed the crimes, like the heads of prisons where people are held," she said. "The first step is to raise awareness for the problem."

She added that "this is not only deportation. This is arbitrary detention with torture, with death in captivity."

Austravicius has promised to advocate for those affected, and for their families.

Reshetylova is convinced that creating public awareness can bring about success. She was in Skopje, North Macednoia, last November, at the Ministerial Council of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was one of the ministers present.

While there, Lavrov had to listen to harsh criticism of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A few days later, several detainees that Reshetylova's organization had campaigned for were released, as the activist recounts.

Of course, she can't be sure if the two events, the prisoners' release and the harsh criticism directed at Lavrov, were related. But at least the Russian side responded, she says.

The conclusion she draws from the experience, is that "it's better to make their loved ones famous in public. It increases their chances to be released."

This article was originally written in German.