Chilling silence 13 months after enforced disappearance of Crimean Anatoliy Kobzar
Russia’s FSB are refusing to provide any information about the whereabouts of Anatoliy Kobzar, although they were clearly involved in his disappearance over 13 months ago.
Anatoliy Kobzar’s family last saw him on 5 March 2024 when the then 44-year-old Ukrainian set off for work from his home in Sevastopol in occupied Crimea. The following day, a search was carried out of his home, with the FSB looking for and removing Kobzar’s Ukrainian documents. According to the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre [CTRC], the home of friends was also subjected to a search, with the FSB looking for documents concerning Kobzar.
With its invasion and annexation of Crimea, Russia brought enforced disappearances to the peninsula, with a number of prominent Crimean Tatar or other Ukrainian activists among those who have disappeared without trace. Kobzar’s disappearance is certainly more akin to an abduction, than an ‘arrest’, however the searches mean that the FSB are not trying to conceal their involvement. Eskender Bariev, Chair of the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre, earlier reported that witnesses have told Kobzar’s family that he was seized by members of Russia’s FSB.
Kobzar had set off by car to his work in Bakhchysarai. Two weeks after his disappearance and searches, his car was found in Bakhchysarai with its windows broken. His telephone turns on from time to time and even connects with the Internet. His family know that somebody is seeing the messages they send to Anatoliy, however there has not been a single response.
The lack of any information must be hellish for Anatoliy’s wife, 25-year-old daughter and son, who is just thirteen, as well as for his mother who had serious health issues even before her son vanished. At a press conference on 15 April about Russia’s enforced disappearances in occupied Crimea, Anatoliy’s sister, Natalia Fluris called for publicity about all such cases, as silence simply fosters the occupying regime’s impunity.
Natalia stresses that her brother had never had any problems with the law nor any contact with criminal elements. It is, in any case, clear from his disappearance and the refusal by the occupation enforcement agencies to even admit that Kobzar is in their custody, that the Ukrainian was not simply arrested on this or that charge. It seems much more likely that he was targeted because of his pro-Ukrainian position and his open opposition to Russia’s occupation of Crimea, with the FSB hiding him while they fabricate some kind of charges against him. Russia has used such methods against Ukrainian political prisoners since 2014, with the lack of any official acknowledgement of a person’s imprisonment making it frighteningly easy for the FSB to use horrific forms of torture to extract ‘confessions’ and false testimony.
The Crimean Tatar Resource Centre have also learned that Ismail Shemshedinov is being held prisoner at SIZO No. 2, one of the remand prisons which Russia opened after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The SIZO is believed to be controlled by the FSB. As reported, Shemshedinov, who was then 28, was taken away on 26 January 2024, when armed and masked FSB officers burst into his family’s home in Crimea. The young man is married, and the couple’s baby daughter was just three months old when he disappeared. All attempts by his family to find out why he had been seized and where he was being held ran up against the same wall of silence that Kobzar’s family have encountered.
Lera Dzhemilova, then also 28, was taken from her home by Russian FSB officers on 21 May 2024, and disappeared. It was only in March 2025 that the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre learned through their own sources that she too is imprisoned in SIZO No. 2 and is, seemingly, facing ‘treason’ charges.
It should be stressed that, despite likely kangaroo trials on fabricated charges and long sentences, the families of Anatoliy Kobzar, Ismail Shemshedinov and Lera Dzhemilova have reason for hoping that they are alive. In many cases, the victims of Russian enforced disappearances have not been seen since they were abducted.
See:
Russian Terror and State-sponsored Abductions. Where is Crimean Tatar activist Ervin Ibragimov?
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