How many Ukrainian prisoners are in the enemy detention centers, and where are they located?

On October 2, 2024, the 74 members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe unanimously adopted a resolution, “Missing persons, prisoners of war, and civilians detained as a result of the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine.” “The figures speak for themselves,” — the document states. “The Assembly is stunned by the findings. As of 18 September 2024, a total of 65,956 military personnel and civilians were registered as missing or captured, including 50,916 registered as missing in action. From February 2022 to 17 September 2024, 3,672 people were returned from Russian captivity, including 168 Ukrainian civilians. The Assembly notes with concern that a third of those released were considered missing, as the Russian Federation failed to provide timely information on their fate, contrary to its international obligations.”

PACE condemned the appalling conditions in which prisoners are being held, as well as the Russian Federation’s lack of desire to communicate with international bodies and the families of Ukrainians held in Russian prisons. Furthermore, the resolution supports the idea of ​​​​an all-for-all exchange.

From the beginning of the full-scale war until the end of 2024, 3,956 prisoners, including 170 civilians, were released in 60 prisoner exchanges.

On January 28, 2025, the international campaign PEOPLE FIRST! was launched. It was initiated by the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureates, the human rights organizations Memorial, the Center for Civil Liberties, the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, and others. They united around a simple idea: the release of all prisoners deprived of their liberty as a result of the Russo-Ukrainian war must be the top priority in peace negotiations.

More information about the campaign can be found here. In ten months, it has grown and now unites 73 European human rights organizations and individual human rights defenders. They meet with foreign ministers and parliaments of EU member states, members of PACE and the European Parliament, and actively engage with countries involved in prisoner release issues, such as the United States, Turkey, and others.

In a letter to US President Donald Trump, the campaign wrote:

“All unlawfully held civilians must be released immediately. The most vulnerable groups among Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war, whose release cannot be delayed, are:

• women at risk of sexual violence;
• individuals with disabilities or serious illnesses, or those seriously injured, including as a result of torture;
• elderly prisoners with underlying health conditions;
• civilians imprisoned for political reasons years before the full-scale invasion.”

In the first five prisoner exchanges, held on January 15, February 5, March 19, April 19, and May 5, 2025, 854 prisoners were released, including one civilian. Of these, 53 were not exchanged; they were added to the exchanged prisoners as seriously ill or seriously wounded.

When Turkish-brokered peace talks in May collapsed on the very first day, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said, “Well, if we couldn’t agree on peace, let’s make an exchange!” An exchange at 1,000-for-1,000 was immediately agreed upon. This exchange was carried out in three stages, from May 22 to 25, and it was the only exchange during the entire war in which the parties did not negotiate lists; each simply released its 1,000 prisoners. 879 prisoners of war and 121 civilians returned to Ukraine.

Subsequently, in accordance with the Istanbul Agreements, eight stages of exchange took place from June 9 to July 4, during which approximately 1,000 prisoners were released, all seriously ill and seriously wounded. This marked the end of exchanges under the Istanbul Agreements, but they are not complete, as the agreed-upon number of prisoners has not been released. The subsequent three prisoner exchanges took place on August 14, 24, and October 2, 2025. A total of 436 prisoners were released, including 357 military personnel and 79 civilian political prisoners convicted in the Donetsk region during the initial period of the war, from 2014 to 2021.

Thus, the PEOPLE FIRST! campaign’s demands for the release of the seriously ill, seriously wounded, and political prisoners imprisoned from 2014 to 2021 have effectively begun to be met, while demands for the release of women and elderly prisoners (aged 60+) have not. Thus, only six women have been released in 2025. Consequently, the campaign must focus on demands for the release of women and the elderly. In total, as of November 1, 2025, 69 prisoner exchanges have taken place since the beginning of the full-scale war, during which 6,235 prisoners were released, including 5,976 men (5,648 military and 323 civilians) and 259 women (210 military and 49 civilians). This does not include approximately 2,000 prisoners released under the Istanbul Agreements. In addition, 12,744 bodies of the dead were returned to Ukraine.

It should be noted that more than half of the total number of prisoners released during the entire war were released in the first 10 months of 2025.

Despite the successful release of prisoners in 2025, the question of how many Ukrainian prisoners are currently held in detention facilities in Russia and the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine remains unanswered. According to data announced on May 1 by Artur Dobroserdov, the Ministry of Internal Affairs Commissioner for Persons Missing in Action under Special Circumstances, we have over 70,000 people on our wanted list. How many of these are military personnel and how many civilians is unknown; these figures are not made public. It is also unknown how many of the dead, whose bodies have not been found or returned, are listed as missing. Nevertheless, it appears that we do not know the whereabouts of several tens of thousands of Ukrainians behind bars.

This assertion stems from the following considerations. At the beginning of the year, there were approximately 10,000 prisoners of war; after the 2025 prisoner exchanges, the number will be approximately 8,000. We analyzed the prisons in Russia and the occupied territories of Ukraine where Ukrainians are held, based on information about the prisons where released prisoners were held. It turned out that there are 280 such prisons: 196 in Russia and 84 in the occupied territories of Ukraine. Each of these facilities holds hundreds, dozens, or even just a few Ukrainian prisoners. If we combine the information we found about the whereabouts of prisoners in these facilities, we find that the whereabouts of a significant number are unknown.

If this latter assertion is true, then we can conclude that Russia is concealing data on the number of Ukrainian prisoners, failing to provide this information to the International Committee of the Red Cross, or providing it in minimal quantities. Therefore, the PEOPLE FIRST! campaign’s demand, put forward in early 2025, that Russia immediately grant UN agencies and the ICRC full access to all prisoners, remains increasingly relevant.