Ukraine: 37,000 people may be missing

Almost 37,000 people – civilians and soldiers – are estimated to be missing since February 2022 in Ukraine. However, the real number could be much higher, warns the country’s human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets.

The missing include children, adds Lubinets.

Calculating the number of missing is difficult as Russia occupies around a fifth of Ukraine. Neither Ukraine nor Russia regularly publishes information on the number of dead or missing in the fighting.

Ukraine and the Red Cross have identified around 1,700 people who are being illegally detained by Russia.

31,000 soldiers have died in the first two years of the war, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a rare statement in February.