![© Сергій Окунєв [обмін] © Sergiy Okunyev](https://khpg.org/files/img/1608824222.png)
— In the spring, we already talked in detail about this database. How much has it grown during this time? How many documenters are working on it now?
— Four documenters work in the team. For each person, the database contains details of the case — the location where the person disappeared, where they are being held, related documents, etc. Such information enables a connection to be made with people who, for example, disappeared in the same area at the same time. Thus, if one person is released, through these “connections” we see who was nearby, and get additional materials and testimonies about people who are still in captivity…
I will provide the general data we have as of the beginning of November this year. Today, the database contains 17,928 people. Of these, 6,751 are missing, 6,640 are in captivity (at the same time, we know the places of detention of 2,179 military personnel and 420 civilians), and 4,502 have been released. It is known that 27 prisoners in our database died in captivity. The database also contains information about 201 children.
— Tell us more about these children, who are they — deported or illegally detained?
— There are three statuses in the database: missing, captive, and released. Missing persons are those about whom nothing is known: a person was at a specific place, was seen or communicated with, and suddenly, there is no information. Prisoners are people who were detained in the presence of witnesses or found through OSINT methods, or official bodies confirmed their captivity. Among the children entered in our database, only two were confirmed captives. 146 are considered missing. 53 have been released. Among the released, there are 45 children from the Chernihiv region (it is noteworthy that the children were taken from March 3 to 7, 2022, during the occupation and released on March 30, 2022). 102 children from Donetsk, 36 from Luhansk (all of them with the status of “disappeared”, applications for missing persons were filed by the department for work with minors of these regions), 4 from Kharkiv region (2 — prisoners, 2 — released), 5 from Kherson region, 8 from Kyiv region (6 — released, 2 — missing). One child in the database is from the Zaporizhzhia region.
— How exactly is the search going?
— We mainly use OSINT methods — this is the collection and analysis of information from open sources. In addition, we learn a lot from lawyers and advocates who communicate with people who have been released from captivity. Ex-captives tell us who they met in captivity, where exactly, and provide other data. Another source of information is lists provided by various organizations or institutions. All primary data is verified.
— How many places of detention of our prisoners have been established?
— Analyzing the places of deprivation of liberty, learned from those who were released through the exchange process, we identified 280 places, of which 196 are in the territory of the Russian Federation, and 84 are in the temporarily occupied territory. In each of these places, there are dozens or hundreds of our prisoners. That is, we can conclude that thousands, or maybe even several tens of thousands of prisoners of war and civilian prisoners are behind bars. The requirement to provide international organizations — the UN, the ICRC, and others with access to them remains highly relevant.
— KHPG lawyers who work with the families of prisoners of war and missing persons file applications with the UN Human Rights Committee, the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances. How many such applications have been filed? Why is it important to do this?
— This is a complicated story… The UN Working Group is one of the most influential levers on the aggressor state institutions. Sometimes we learn that a person is in captivity, and there is even precise information about where they are being held, but the family needs official confirmation. However, the Russian state authorities do not respond to any request submitted by the prisoner’s family. And then, based on the collected materials, the case is submitted to the UN Working Group. The Working Group then sends its request to the Russian authorities, and in some cases, it works. For example, the Russians submitted for the exchange 27 prisoners of war, about whom we wrote to the UN Working Group, although it was not known whether they were alive at all. That is, Russia decided: it is better to exchange them than to communicate with the Working Group.
As of December 1 of this year, our lawyers had filed 1,308 applications with the Working Group on Enforced Disappearances. 273 applications were filed with the UN Human Rights Committee. These are applications regarding dead and injured civilians, unlawfully detained, and victims of torture of civilians, in particular, sexual violence.
— How many missing persons have we found thanks to this project?
— More than four thousand missing persons.
— Are there any among those we found who have already returned? What do they say?
— Approximately 1,500 of those four thousand were released in exchange in 2025. However, of course, we cannot directly influence the exchange process. But, sometimes, the “stars aligned”. For example, a border guard who had been in captivity since April 2022 and whose place of detention we found, then lost, then found again, finally returned to his native land in July. He revealed a lot of new information, including who he was held with, where he was detained, and who heard… All the information was entered into our database.
— One of the goals of the project is advocacy meetings in Sweden. Have such meetings already taken place?
— Our lawyers, Kateryna Buryakovska and Mykhailo Romanov, who work on this project, spent several hectic days in September in Stockholm and had many advocacy meetings. They met with members of the Swedish Parliament, in particular, Markus Viehl, head of the Swedish delegation to PACE, and members of the Swedish delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. According to a sociological survey, 92% of Swedes support Ukraine in this war.
There was a meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with employees of the department for human rights and international legal proceedings. The topic was the decision “Netherlands and Ukraine v. Russia”, in which representatives of Sweden intervened, providing witnesses at the request of the applicants. Our lawyers also met with the police and with the Swedish human rights organization “Defenders of Civil Cases”. Kateryna and Mykhailo gave an interview to Swedish radio. It turned out that the journalist Maria, who interviewed them, follows the KHPG’s activities. They also spoke about the KHPG’s work in an interview with the magazine “Global Bar”.
— Which case touched you personally the most?
— In May of last year, a resident of Kherson contacted the Mykolaiv office of the KHPG Group. She registered a missing person’s complaint about her niece E. In November 2022, E. had been kidnapped from a village in the Kherson region... E. is a civilian. At the time of the kidnapping, she was only 21 years old. Unfortunately, neither OSINT search methods nor letters to Russian official bodies yielded any results. Data about E. was entered into the database with the status of “missing civilian”. But in February of this year, our search engines found information that the occupiers sentenced a certain citizen E. to 10 years under Article. 276 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (espionage), and she is being held in a pre-trial detention center in the village of Chonhar, Kherson region. Documenters entered this information into the database, and the database immediately showed that our Mykolaiv lawyers were already processing this case. The lawyers were notified of the updated data, contacted E.’s aunt, and now she will receive enhanced legal assistance.
