28,000 Ukrainian Civilians in Russian Captivity, Human Rights Commissioner Says

On Dec. 7, Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament’s Commissioner for Human Rights, accused Russia of holding 28,000 civilian Ukrainians against their will as a result of Russian aggression. Ukraine currently knows nothing about the condition of the captives or their whereabouts.

“Civilian hostages, in my opinion, are a new system of suppression of the civilian population in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine,” Lubinets said during the international conference on human rights “Freedom or Fear” on Thursday.

He claimed that among these 28,000 civilian Ukrainian citizens, 2,000 are over 65 years old: “There are cases in which Ukrainian citizens who are over 80-85 years old are captured only for pro-Ukrainian statements. And we cannot do anything about it.”

In addition, Lubinets noted that more than 19,500 Ukrainian children have been officially deported to Russia. According to him, Russia continues to deport “more and more groups” of children from Ukraine every day.

If Ukraine returns one child taken by the Russians every day, the process will take more than 50 years. Lubinets also assured that the Ukrainian government has many initiatives to return Ukrainian children.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have enough tools for returning all the deported Ukrainian children. But we are looking for new tools,” Lubinets said.