War in Ukraine: at least 37 thousand people have disappeared since the Russian invasion began

They are victims of the war in Ukraine. On Tuesday, Kyiv authorities announced that they had identified some 37,000 civilians and soldiers missing since the Russian invasion began, a partial number due in part to Moscow’s occupation of nearly 20% of the country. “Almost 37,000 people are missing: children, civilians and soldiers,” Ukraine’s human rights commissioner Dmitry Lubinets said on social media, according to new counts. “These figures could be much higher,” he stressed, however, since the census work is still ongoing.

Since the Russian invasion began on February 24, 2022, tens of thousands of people have died, both civilians and soldiers, but total casualty figures have not been established from reliable sources. And procedures to identify dead or missing people can take several months. The Ukrainian and Russian armies reported their military losses only on very rare occasions.

“About 1,700 Ukrainians” were “illegally” detained in Russia

The number of civilian casualties is also unknown, since there is no reliable information about the territories occupied by Russia since the start of the invasion, an assault that led to the destruction of a number of cities and villages.

Symbolic is the case of Mariupol, besieged by Russian troops in the spring of 2022 and now occupied. According to Kyiv, tens of thousands of people died there and were buried under the rubble or in mass graves. In addition, according to Dmitry Lubinets, “about 1,700” Ukrainians are also “illegally detained” by Russia. Finally, Ukraine estimates that 20,000 Ukrainian children were deported to Russia over two years.

In the spring of 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for their role in the “deportation” of Ukrainian children to Russia. The Kremlin denies these accusations.