The Forgotten Detainees of the Russian Aggression in Ukraine

In recent days, prompted in part by the White House, discussion has revived around possible peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. Yet once again, these talks largely ignore the people most directly harmed by the war: prisoners of war, deported children, and the thousands of Ukrainian civilians held hostage in occupied territory. Nor do the negotiations address political detainees jailed in Russia and Belarus for antiwar activism or for supporting Ukraine.

On October 2, 2024, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) unanimously adopted a resolution on missing persons, prisoners of war, and civilians in detention. “The numbers speak for themselves,” the document states.

As of September 18, 2024, 65,956 Ukrainian service members and civilians have been registered as missing or captured, including 50,916 listed as missing. From February 2022 to September 17, 2024, only 3,672 people were returned from Russian captivity, among them 168 civilians. A third of those released had previously been considered missing, because Russia failed to provide timely information on their status—an explicit violation of its international obligations.

PACE condemned both the inhumane conditions of detention and Russia’s persistent refusal to communicate with international bodies and the families of detained Ukrainians. The resolution also endorsed the principle of “all-for-all” prisoner exchanges.

By the end of 2024, 60 such exchanges had taken place, freeing 3,956 people, including 170 civilians.

Rise of the People First! Campaign

On January 28, 2025, human rights organizations—including the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureates Memorial, the Center for Civil Liberties, and the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group—launched the international campaign People First! Its core principle is straightforward: the release of all persons deprived of liberty as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war must be a central priority of any peace process. Ten months later, the campaign has grown to 73 European organizations and individual defenders, engaging EU governments, PACE members, the European Parliament, the United States, Turkey, and others.

In a letter to President Donald Trump, the campaign emphasized the urgent need to free:

• women at risk of sexual violence,
• persons with disabilities, severe illness, or torture-related injuries,
• elderly detainees with health problems,
• civilians imprisoned for political reasons prior to the full-scale invasion.

Surge of Exchanges in 2025

The first five exchanges of 2025 between Russia and Ukraine—on January 15, February 5, March 19, April 19, and May 5—freed 854 captives, including one civilian. Notably, 53 severely ill or wounded individuals were released unconditionally, outside the exchange lists.

When the May peace talks in Turkey collapsed on the first day, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan declared: “If we cannot agree on peace, then let us exchange.” The sides quickly arranged a 1,000-for-1,000 exchange—the only instance during the war in which neither party negotiated lists. Conducted between May 22 and 25, it returned 879 POWs and 121 civilians to Ukraine.

Under the resulting Istanbul Agreements, eight further exchange stages occurred between June 9 and July 4, freeing approximately 1,000 seriously wounded or ill prisoners. These exchanges have since stalled but remain formally unfinished.

Three more exchanges on August 14, August 24, and October 2, 2025 freed 436 people—357 military personnel and 79 civilians, including political prisoners convicted in the Donetsk region between 2014 and 2021.

On November 22, an additional 31 Ukrainian citizens imprisoned in Belarus were released and transferred to Ukraine. Their sentences ranged from two to 11 years. Among them was an 18-year-old woman who had been arrested at the age of 16, as well as a 58-year-old man who was the oldest in the group. Several of the detainees were in critical health, including individuals with cancer diagnoses. At least one, possibly two, had to be carried on stretchers because they were unable to walk independently. This new transfer further raises the total number of people freed in 2025.

Thus, some demands of People First!—the release of the severely ill, severely wounded, and long-term political prisoners—are being partially met. But its calls to prioritize women and detainees older than 60 remain unanswered: only six women were freed in all of 2025 (excluding the last release in Belarus).

Scale of Captivity—and Scale of the Unknown

As of December 2, 2025, a total of 70 exchanges had freed 6,266 people, a number that includes the 31 Ukrainian citizens released from Belarus on 22 November 2025. Among those for whom data are available, there are 5,976 men (5,648 military personnel and 323 civilians) and 259 women (210 military personnel and 49 civilians). This figure does not include the roughly 2,000 people freed under the Istanbul framework. Ukraine has also received 12,744 bodies of the dead.

More than half of all freed prisoners were released in the first 11 months of 2025 alone.

Despite these gains, the fundamental question remains unanswered: How many Ukrainians are still held by Russia or in occupied Ukrainian territory?

On May 1, Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s Commissioner for Missing Persons Artur Dobroserdov stated that more than 70,000 people remain listed as missing. The state does not disclose how many are civilians or military personnel. Nor is it known how many of the missing are in fact deceased but unrecovered. The likely conclusion is that tens of thousands of Ukrainians may still be in captivity, their whereabouts unknown.

Civil society researchers, analyzing testimonies of freed prisoners, have identified 280 detention sites used to hold Ukrainians, 196 in the Russian Federation and 84 in occupied Ukrainian territory Each contains anywhere from a handful to several hundred detainees. When available data on those sites is aggregated, it becomes clear that thousands of Ukrainian captives remain unaccounted for.

If this assessment is accurate, Russia is concealing the true scale of Ukrainian detention and withholding information from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Or it is providing information in extremely limited form.

For this reason, the core People First! demand from early 2025 remains urgent: Russia must immediately grant UN agencies and the ICRC full access to all detainees.

Without transparency on the fate of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and POWs—and without their release—discussions of “peace” risk becoming detached from the lived reality of those whose liberty is the price of war and diplomacy. This disconnect is compounded by the current debate over a U.S.-backed peace proposal. Although Ukraine has signed the updated plan coordinated with the United States, most people in Ukraine are convinced that Russia will not accept it. Earlier drafts included 28 points that reflected Russia’s stated interests, but these demands, which in practice would require Ukraine’s capitulation, were not included in the version that Ukraine signed.

Simultaneously, Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy and life-support infrastructure have intensified, and Russian forces continue their offensive. This reinforces the belief in Ukraine that Moscow has no intention of ending the war. In this environment, progress on detainee issues is indispensable not only for humanitarian reasons but also as a test of whether negotiations have any real substance.

Original article: Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF)