37,000 people are considered missing in Ukraine

In Ukraine, almost 37,000 people are considered missing, said Dmytro Lubinets, the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, on April 16.

“These are children, civilians and military. These numbers can be much higher,” the ombudsman wrote.

As Lubinets reported, this number includes about 1,700 people whom Ukraine, with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross and other means, verified as illegally detained by Russia.

Calculating the exact number of missing is difficult because Russian forces still occupy about one-fifth of the country’s territory, and neither side regularly publishes figures on military casualties.

According to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, as of March 2024, it managed to verify data on the death of 10,810 civilians and the wounding of 20,556 as a result of Russia’s two-year full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The organization assumes that the number of victims among civilians is much higher.