Around 1700 Ukrainian civilians are officially confirmed to be in Russian captivity, however the real figure could be ten times that number, or more. The reason for widely divergent estimates as to the actual number lies with Russia’s refusal to even admit to holding civilians prisoner. In some cases, illegal charges are fabricated to try to justify holding civilians prisoner, in others, nothing is known about a person’s whereabouts, nor about their status, if any, in Russian captivity. The latter include Andriy Varvarov, a Ukrainian disk jockey, who was abducted in March 2022 at a Russian checkpoint near occupied Tokmak (Zaporizhzhia oblast).
It may well be that Varvarov was abducted initially because the Russians liked the look of his car and wanted it for themselves. Two and a half years later, however, he remains a hostage, with Russia refusing to provide any information as to where he is imprisoned.
27-year-old Varvarov was in Mariupol when Russian began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, however his then fiancée and sister were living in Zaporizhzhia. He initially managed to get to them, but then, on 17 March 2022, set off with a friend, Vadym Nosan, to try to help friends escape from occupied Berdiansk (Zaporizhzhia oblast). Neither man had any connection with Ukraine’s Armed Forces or with the enforcement bodies, yet they were seized by the Russians at a checkpoint near occupied Tokmak.
For over a month, there was no information about Varvarov at all. Then on 25 April, his family found his name and photo on an anti-Ukrainian Telegram channel which claimed to be posting photos of “demilitarized” Ukrainian soldiers, etc. taken prisoner.
According to Oleksiy Ladukhin from the NGO Every Human Being, the car was later seen being used by Russian invaders for their own personal needs, with this, he believes, likely to have been the real motive for the men’s seizure. Such sordid motives were behind other abductions back in 2014, such as that of Ukrainian sportsman Oleg Shevandin. His whereabouts remain unknown to this day.
Varvarov’s family have at least had confirmation that he is in Russian captivity. They received a letter from Russia’s defence ministry in June 2022, which asserted that Varvarov was ‘a prisoner of war’ and that he had been “detained for countering the special military operation’ (Russia’s euphemism for its war of aggression against Ukraine] and “to establish the circumstances, with investigative measures being taken”. Varvarov was not, nor ever had been, a Ukrainian soldier. The defence ministry would be in violation of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war if it did genuinely consider him to be a POW, since it is not providing any information about his whereabouts. The claim that a person was seized for opposition to Russia’s so-called ‘special military operation’ is, in any case, generally used where Russia has abducted civilians and is holding them prisoner. There is no such ‘offence’ in Russia’s criminal code, nor would the aggressor state have any right to be using such a charge against a Ukrainian civilian seized on Ukrainian territory.
In August 2022, the family received a letter from Varvarov, without a return address on the envelope. The Red Cross which had passed on the letter say that they do not know where he is held. The letter itself follows the standard format of such letters, with prisoners essentially allowed only to write that they are in a good state of health, are well fed and are allowed ‘walks’. He stated also that he was “temporarily detained in order to establish circumstances and that he was on Russian territory.” Since Varvarov would have been told what to write, and since the aggressor state is claiming that occupied territory has ‘become part of the Russian Federation’, Varvarov could, in fact, be imprisoned in occupied Ukraine.
Snizhana also explains that they learned more after a Ukrainian prisoner of war, who knows her brother, was released in an exchange of prisoners in late 2022. He was held prisoner in occupied Horlivka (Donetsk oblast) together with a civilian hostage who had been brought to Horlivka from a SIZO [remand prison] in Voronezh (Russia). That hostage told the POW that he had been held together with Andriy and that that the latter had been beaten every night and brought back to the cell half dead. Snizhana wrote to the Russian penal service in Voronezh oblast, and received the response that “while investigative measures are being carried out, they do not reveal a person’s whereabouts.”
Since the vast majority of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian hostages are subjected to torture, this secrecy is, in fact, about ensuring that a person has no access to proper lawyers or contact with family, etc. while Russian ‘investigators’ use beatings, electric shocks, mock executions and other forms of torture to extract ‘confessions’.
Russia has, purportedly, been “establishing the circumstances” for two and a half years, with Andriy Varvarov illegally imprisoned, without any contact with his family and without any access to a lawyer.
