Russians record fake videos of civilian hostages being released

Russia has abducted thousands of civilian Ukrainians from Ukraine. They are being illegally held hostage and often called prisoners of war, so it is extremely difficult to bring back such people.

Source: Petro Yatsenko, head of the press service of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War

Details: According to Petro Yatsenko, it is not necessary to call the homecoming of civilian hostages an exchange.

"The word ‘exchange’ is not suitable here. That is, we would have to catch Russian civilians somewhere and exchange them. Of course, we will not do this. But the problem is really huge. Because there are many civilians that Russia has captured and imprisoned. 

They don't even have any legal basis to actually keep these people in jail. They are trying to accuse them of obstructing the so-called ‘special military operation’, and they are still making up something", said Yatsenko [Special military operation is a Russian propaganda term for the war in Ukraine – ed.]. 

The Coordination Headquarters is also aware of cases where the Russians simply release civilian hostages who have been held captive.

"But they release them without documents or means of subsistence. Then it is very difficult for them to get out, for example, from Russia or from the temporarily occupied territories to the territory controlled by Ukraine," says the head of the press service.

According to Petro Yatsenko, earlier it was proposed to exchange civilian Ukrainians for Russian servicemen. 

"But this is also not an option because many Ukrainians live in the occupied territories. This will be an incentive for them to capture everyone in order to exchange them. This is not an option. And this is where international pressure is important," Yatsenko explains.

He also noted that the Russians are very creative in how they use hostages. They often record videos of civilians being released when, in fact, they continue to hold them captive.

"We have seen Russians on camera allegedly releasing civilians they had imprisoned. For the video, they said: ‘Here is a checkpoint on the border with the occupied territory. And now we let you go, go anywhere you want.’ And these people seemed to be going somewhere, but then they did not come to Ukrainian territory." Yatsenko added.

He is convinced that the actions of the Russians are aimed at causing as much suffering as possible to the civilian population of Ukraine and discouraging them from helping their troops.

The head of the press service of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War also drew attention to the lack of activity by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in working on the release of Ukrainian prisoners of war.

Thus, in Ukraine, the ICRC has full access to the absolute majority of places of detention of prisoners, while on the Russian side, it has access to only a few.

"We would like the ICRC to be more active in demanding this access and helping. Now we see that they have started to work more actively, in particular in terms of delivering parcels and visiting these places. And now they are faced with the fact that Russia has allegedly signed all the documents on access but is not going to comply with them; there is no interaction." concludes Yatsenko.

Background: 230 Ukrainians were brought back from Russian captivity for the first time since August 2023.

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