Families of the missing fear of Ukraine will not bring them home

Tatyana Popovytch had contacted every desk she could think of. She had walked every step that her son Vladislav could have taken after the Russians had opened the fire on his car, so he had to flee in his leg with a bullet. She had looked in massagraven, rated photos of the dead, looked at excavations. And after a month she knew no more than when she started.

Then a stranger called.

Serhii was just released from a Russian prison in Kursk. The prisoners could not see each other in the morning role Call, but they could hear each person mention his full name and home village. Serhii remember as many names and places as he could – a total of 10, he said – and on May 9, 2022 he called Tatyana to say he had heard her son’s voice.

Just like Vladislav, Serhii was imprisoned a burger from Bucha at the start of the war, when hundreds of civilians were taken from this area. Vladislav was then 29. Now 32, he is still in prison in Kursk. Serhii could not explain Tatyana why he was released and did not have Vladislav. Tatyana was just happy to hear that her son lived. “I was so overjoyed that I lost the stutter I had since he was taken,” she said.

Three years later, to this day, Tatyana was in a cafe in Bucha, not far from where her son was abducted and looked at the scarce evidence that he was still alive: two letters from him – short, boilerplate texts written in Russian, and told her that he was well fed and well cared for. Each letter had taken about three months to reach Tatyana, making it difficult for her to feel very connected to her son at some point.

“My son is very gentle and sensitive,” she said, with the painful expression of a parent who cannot protect their child. She looked at photos of Vlad Ballroom Dancing – a hobby from a young age. “He is so vulnerable,” she said. “I am worried that he will lose his common sense there.”

According to the Ukrainian authorities, nearly 16,000 Ukrainian citizens are still in captivity in Russian prisons after being abducted by the invading army – not counting the more than 20,000 Ukrainian children who have been brought to Russia.

There are now growing fears among their many thousands of lovers, in the midst of the apparent progress in the direction of peace talks, that they can be forgotten or lost. And those fears seem to be justified.

According to the Geneva Convention, there is a recognized mechanism for exchanging prisoners of war, but such a mechanism does not exist for the return of caught citizens, so that even top Ukrainian and international officials are looking for a statement about how they can be brought home.

“When I attend official meetings, at the Ombudsman’s office or elsewhere, no one talks about bringing the citizens back in the case of a cessation -the fires,” said Yulia Hripun, 23, whose father was kidnapped in the war in the war from a village just west of Kyiv.

In the weeks after learning the imprisonment of her father, Yulia used Facebook to contact another daughter of a captured Ukrainian and the pair launched a new organization to campaign for all the citizens’ release.

The group has met representatives of the UN, the European Parliament, the governments of various EU countries and the American embassy in Ukraine.

“We spoke with them, but it came down to the fact that they honestly do not understand what is going to happen,” said Yulia, of meeting the Americans.

“The only thing they said is that Trump is interested in the issue of deported children and that citizens may be able to fit in one way or another in that category. But they are actually different categories that cannot be combined.”

Worrying for Yulia and other family members of the citizens captured, do not pretend that they have a stronger idea.

“I don’t see the real, effective approach to bring the civil prisoners back to Ukraine,” said Dmytro Lubinets, human rights Ombudsman of the country. “We have no legal basis or the mechanisms to give them back,” he told frankly.

The problem that the problem further complicates is that Russia is leveling criminal charges against some of those who were caught during the invasion.

“And when you see these charges, these are often” actions against the special military operation, “said Lubinets. “Can you imagine that you would open an investigation against a Ukrainian citizen for simply against the invading Russian army on Ukrainian territory?”

In May, Russia released 120 civil prisoners as part of a larger swap of prisoners of war, and further exchanges are expected. But the figures are still disappearingly small compared to the tens of thousands who have been seized – adults and children. And great uncertainty remains on the path to a negotiated peace.

“You want to believe that he is coming home, at the same time you can’t believe it,” said Petro Sereda, 61, a bus driver of Irpin, near Kyiv, whose son Arty was imprisoned more than three years ago. “It’s extremely difficult.”

Petro and his wife live in the temporary accommodation in the return style of container style in Irpin, because their house was destroyed in the invasion. Even three years later, every time the phone rings, Petro thinks it might be Artym.

“It is one thing to have a letter that says he is alive, but to hear his voice … That would be the joy that he really lives.”

The families live like that, in desperate hope. The dream is that they see their loved ones again. However, it is not a simple dream – some fear that Russian imprisonment has caused permanent damage.

Tatyana, whose ball dancing son Vladislav was abducted from Bucha, said she shivered to hear the Russian language now “because it is the language that my son is being tortured.”

There is also the issue of what is being missed. During the detention of Vladislav, his father unexpectedly died at only 50, with a source of debt that he could not protect his son.

The only thing that Tatyana can do is mentally prepare for the return of Vladislav. She expected to “feel any possible emotion,” she said. “It’s all that I think about. All the time, every day.”

Daria Mitiuk has contributed to this report. Photos by Joel Gunter