About 1,000 civilians are in Russian captivity

Ukrainian human rights activists have reported that there are about a hundred places on the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine and in Russia where about a thousand civilian Ukrainians are being held.

Source: Ukrinform news agency, citing the Media Initiative for Human Rights and the Tsyvilni u Poloni (Captured Civilians) NGO

Quote from Tetiana Katrychenko, coordinator at the Media Initiative: "According to the Ministry of Reintegration, 950 civilians were held in detention facilities as of the end of February 2023. Our list, which we maintain in parallel with the support of the NGO Civilians in Captivity, contains approximately the same number of people. We cannot say whether the lists coincide or not, as the state information is closed."

Details: According to the Media Initiative, 948 hostages have been identified; they are civilians on the temporarily occupied territories and in Russia.

Human rights activists have presented a map with places of detention of civilians and prisoners of war. It shows one hundred places of detention – from Donetsk and Kherson oblasts to Irkutsk Oblast in Russia.

Prisons in the liberated territories of Kyiv and Sumy oblasts are also localised.

According to the experts, the map was developed over a year. They had been monitoring social media and websites to identify people who disappeared during the occupation. The experts also interviewed people released from captivity.

Katrychenko has noted that new prisons are discovered almost every day, so their total number could be several hundred, and the number of hostages might be up to 15,000. After all, much of Ukraine is still occupied, and detentions occur there every day, and human rights activists discover new places of detention.

Police stations, administrative buildings, basements and recreation centres are reportedly used as places of detention and torture in the occupied territories.

For instance, 4 to 10 people are held in each of the buildings at the recreation centre in the Arabat Spit in Kherson Oblast.

In addition, some people from the occupied left (eastern) bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast were transferred to two pre-trial detention centres in Simferopol. The Media Initiative identified 70 Ukrainians who were held there.

Katrychenko has noted that anyone who arouses "suspicion" among the Russians, in particular when trying to evacuate, can be held in such places.

For reference: The Media Initiative for Human Rights is a Ukrainian non-governmental organisation founded in September 2016 by journalists Mariia Tomak and Olha Reshetylova. The organisation monitors and documents human rights violations in connection with the armed aggression of the Russian Federation, covers and investigates individual episodes, analyses the data collected and conducts advocacy activities.

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