More than 15,000 Ukrainian citizens have gone missing since the start of the war in Ukraine. This is reported by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). The vast majority of the missing and deceased are victims of war crimes and the perpetrators must be held accountable.
The European director of the ICMP, Matthew Holliday, says that numerous Ukrainians have been forcibly taken to Russia and are being held captive there. How much exactly is not known. The organization also does not know which of the missing is still alive or who died and was buried in an improvised grave. According to Holliday, searches for missing persons will continue for years after the war.
It is estimated that more than 15,000 people have disappeared, although Holliday believes the figure is probably higher in reality. For example, the authorities of the southeastern port city of Mariupol alone claim that 25,000 residents are dead or missing. “The numbers are huge and the challenges Ukraine faces are very big. In addition, they continue to fight against the Russian Federation,” says the director.
In the capital Kiev, the ICMP has started collecting DNA samples. During the Yugoslav wars from 1991 to 2001, the organization also searched extensively for DNA matches with relatives of the missing persons and succeeded in tracking down 27,000 of the 40,000 reported missing persons. The ICMP now hopes to do the same in Ukraine. “What matters now is that all the right measures are taken so that as many people as possible can be identified,” concludes Holliday.
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