Europe | Alive or dead?

The search for Ukraine’s missing soldiers and sailors

The families of missing loved ones are trying to find them, alive or dead

Photograph: Amnon Gutman/Families of Missing People Project/ICRC, Ukraine
|KYIV

IN A NONDESCRIPT office in a nondescript building in Kyiv, with no sign on its door, four middle-aged men are trawling through gruesome films and photos on the internet. Often they are looking at Russian Telegram channels that specialise in parading captured Ukrainian soldiers. In pictures taken in the past few days one man’s face is running with blood; another has his hands tied but a cigarette is in his mouth. A third, seemingly wounded, is being pushed in a wheelbarrow. These Ukrainian policemen are cyber-hunters searching for Ukraine’s missing soldiers, of whom there are tens of thousands.

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This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Where are they?”

From the October 12th 2024 edition

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