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The Tribunal for Putin (T4P) global initiative was set up in response to the all-out war launched by Russia against Ukraine in February 2022.

DNA used to identify Ukrainian civilians abducted and murdered by the Russian invaders

20.01.2025   
Halya Coynash
The three civilians abducted in 2022 were killed in Russian captivity, as were Yevhen Matvieiev, Mayor of Dniprorudne, 27-year-old journalist Victoria Roshchyna, and, almost certainly, others

The pit which the Russians used to imprison civilian hostages like Andriy Pashchenko, his brother and brother-in-law Photo Viktor Kovalchuk, MIHR

The pit which the Russians used to imprison civilian hostages like Andriy Pashchenko, his brother and brother-in-law Photo Viktor Kovalchuk, MIHR

The Media Initiative for Human Rights [MIHR] has reported the heartbreaking news that three Ukrainian families have received thanks to DNA analyses about relatives abducted by the Russians back in 2022.  For very many other families, including those whose husbands, sons or other relatives disappeared in occupied Crimea or Donbas after 2014, the agonized waiting continues.  MIHR alone has identified almost two thousand civilians abducted since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and that is by no means a comprehensive figure.

The Russians began abducting Ukrainians from any territory that fell under its occupation in 2022, with the lucky ones eld and tortured in basements or makeshift torture prisons but then released.  It was clear, after the invaders were forced to withdraw from Bucha and other occupied parts of Kyiv oblast that some of their victims had been tortured and killed immediately.  Among the bodies left on the streets or flung into mass graves were several women who had first been raped.

Some of the civilians, including UNIAN journalist Dmytro Khyliuk, are known to be held somewhere in Russia.  The fate and / or whereabouts of many others remains unknown.  This was the case, until recently, with Serhiy Diedovsky who was abducted from Chernihiv oblast, and two other civilians from Kyiv oblast –  Andriy Pashchenko and Serhiy Shevtsov.  Tragically, all are now known to have been murdered.

Serhiy Diedovsky Photo reposted from the MIHR site

Serhiy Diedovsky Photo reposted from the MIHR site

Serhiy Diedovsky was from Kamianska Sloboda, a large village in Chernihiv oblast near the border with Russia.  The invaders burst into his home on 23 March 2022, carried out a search, taking away documents and abducting Serhiy himself.  Although Russia often denies any knowledge of the civilian hostages its soldiers abducted, they did admit, half a year after Kamianska Sloboda was liberated, that Serhiy was in their custody. The Russians virtually never admit where they are holding Ukrainians prisoner and it was only in the winter of 2023 that a freed civilian hostage was able to report that he had been held with Serhiy Diedovsky in a SIZO [remand prison] in Ryazan oblast.  His sister Liubov later learned of two other prisons around Russia where Serhiy had been held, including that in Mordovia where Serhiy almost certainly died.  MIHR reports that this is a prison where Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war are held together and given virtually nothing to eat, with POWs getting especially brutal treatment.

It was in April 2024 that Liubov learned, from a morgue in Poltava, that her brother was dead, and that his body had been returned from Mordovia as part of an exchange.  Russia claimed that he had died on 15 February 2024 “from heart problems”.  This is Russia’s standard ‘explanation’ for deaths in Russian captivity and Liubov is surely right to be sceptical.  She pointed out to MIHR that she had seen a photo of her brother on a Russian Telegram channel back in 2022, with a red mark, as though from asphyxiation.

Andriy Pashchenko Photo reposted from the MIHR site

Andriy Pashchenko Photo reposted from the MIHR site

Andriy Pashchenko was from Dymer in Kyiv oblast.  He had sent his family away when the Russians invaded, but remained himself.  He was not the only victim of the invaders’ mass abductions of local residents.  Andriy’s brother-in-law, Vasyl Volokhin, was seized on 5 March 2022; with the Russians coming for Andriy Pashchenko and his brother, Oleh Chernenko, on 29 March.  The Russians claimed that Vasyl and Andriy had directed fire for Ukraine’s armed forces.

Oleh Chernenko was later released, and able to explain what happened in those first days.  They were first taken out to a field and savagely beaten; and then held in a pit in occupied Katiuzhanka around two and a half metres deep, with four held prisoner the first day, and then 16.  They were not given anything to eat or drink, nor taken out to the toilet, being forced to use the same pit where they were held.  The men had been seized from their home and were in light clothes, while the temperature hovered around 0 Celsius. 

Oleh and several other civilians were finally released, however the other civilians, including Andriy Pashchenko and Vasyl Volokhin were taken to Russia. Letters were received in August 2022 from a SIZO in Bryansk oblast.  Later, it was learned that Vasyl had been moved to a SIZO in Tula oblast, but there was no information at all about Andriy for the next two years.

In April 2024, Andriy’s sister was asked to do a repeat DNA test which, unfortunately, confirmed that a body which had been returned from the SIZO in Byansk oblast was that of Andriy Pashchenko.  No information was given as to the cause of death, and because only the skeleton remained, it was impossible to assess whether Andriy had been tortured to death. 

Serhiy Shevtsov Photo reposted from the MIHR site

Serhiy Shevtsov Photo reposted from the MIHR site

Serhiy Shevtsov was from Hostomel (Kyiv oblast) and had just undergone an operation after breaking his leg.  He and other patients were discharged on the day of the full-scale invasion, but because of his injury, he could not evacuate and remained in Hostomel, with his mother. 

Although the invaders had, apparently, threatened to shoot Serhiy several times because of his negative attitude to them, they do seem to have reacted and treated his wound after this festered because he had been discharged too early and had needed to remove his own stitches. 

On 22 March, with his leg still bandaged, Serhiy left home and never returned.  His mother searched for him for two weeks, until somebody told her that they had seen a person with a bandaged leg and a jacket like that of her son’s being taken away on a Russian tank.

It was only in September 2024 that Serhiy’s mother learned, from the DNA test, that her son was dead.  His body had been returned, as part of an exchange, in December 2023, with the cause of death a blow to the chest.  The body had a Russian label which gave the date of death as 23 March 2022, the day after he had been abducted.

Some of the bodies, showing clear signs of torture, were discovered soon after the Russians abductions in 2022, including those of Vitaliy Lapchuk and Denys Myronov.   If, in their case, they were seized and tortured to death for their believed active resistance to the Russian invasion of Kherson,  Yevhen Matveyev, Mayor of Dniprorudne in Zaporizhzhia oblast, was almost certainly tortured to death solely because of his patriotism and refusal to collaborate with the invaders.   He was abducted on 13 March 2022, with nothing known about his whereabouts until the Russians returned his body, in an exchange, almost three years later.  

Russia is also refusing to return the body of 27-year-old Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna, whom the Russians seized from occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast in early August 2023 and only admitted to holding in April 2024.   Victoria died in October this year, either in one of the most notorious of Russian SIZOs in Taganrog, or while being moved from it to Moscow, where she was supposed to be part of the next exchange of prisoners.

Over 12 thousand DNA specialists are currently working on identifying the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.   According to Ruslan Abbasov, the Deputy Director of the Interior Ministry’s State Forensic Centre, they receive thousands of requests for DNA analyses every day, with the Centre’s workload having increased threefold since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

MIHR’s department for documenting international crimes has identified 1887 Ukrainian civilians abducted by the Russians since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  That figure is changing all the time and likely to be only a part of the full number.  Although the department was created in 2022, Russia brought enforced disappearances to both Crimea and occupied parts of Donbas back in 2014.  There is no information to this day, for example, about Crimean Tatar activist Ervin Ibragimov and many other Crimean Tatar activists and others.  The lack of any real attempt by the occupation ‘authorities’ to find those abducted only confirms suspicion that they behind the disappearances.  The number of victims of such abductions in occupied Donbas before 2022 is unknown, but likely to be high.  They include Oleh Shevandin, a well-known Ukrainian sportsman and public figure, who was abducted in occupied Debaltseve in 2015, almost certainly by members of the Russian military whose involvement in the war in Donbas Russia was then denying.

According to the head of this department, Anastasia Pantelieieva, such abductions take place on a daily basis in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk; Mykolaiv, Kharkiv oblasts and in occupied Crimea.  They also happened in those parts of Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy oblasts that were earlier under occupation. 

Although a very small number of civilians have been released in the course of exchanges of prisoners, such releases are extremely hard to organize, not least because Russia so often refuses to admit to holding civilians.  This may be because any enforced disappearances, imprisonment, torture and forced deportation of Ukrainian civilians are prohibited by international law, but such secrecy also makes it easier for Russia to behave with particular lawlessness while also preventing international organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross from seeing the hostages.  The fact that such treatment of civilians is in flagrant violation of international law means, in turn, that there are no mechanisms for securing their release.  

International bodies like the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine and the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine have documented Russia’s widespread and systematic use of torture against Ukrainian prisoners of war.  The above examples, as well as the lack of any procedural guarantees in the case of civilian hostages whose imprisonment is not admitted, suggest that Russia’s treatment of civilians is likely to be at least as bad, if not worse. 

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