Fighting to free thousands of civilians held by Russia

HUNDREDS of Ukrainian civilians kidnapped by Kremlin forces as they retreated from a failed mission to take Kyiv are still missing - four years on.

- JOHN MARONE

Along with war trophies and plunder from private homes, Vladimir Putin's invaders dragged off large numbers of residents from villages they briefly held during their march towards the capital in April 2022.

Most of those abducted remain in jails across the Eurasian landmass.

Now, as war rages on, the Kyivbased Centre for Civil Liberties is tasked with identifying and locating these victims of war, in the hope of one day bringing them home.

Natalia Yaschuk, a senior manager at the centre, said: "Sometimes you had a person who was detained and imprisoned just for bringing water to a village cut off because of fighting." The centre has identified some 200 non-combatants forcibly taken from the scores of villages and small towns that surround Kyiv - and 1,800 more taken from other parts of Ukraine.

Altogether, Natalia estimates as many as 16,000 Ukrainian civilians are languishing in Russian-controlled jails, prisons or penal colonies.