GENEVA: The Red Cross said Thursday it was trying to find out what happened to nearly 50,000 people who have disappeared in the past three years of Russia's war in Ukraine.
The International Committee of the Red Cross also said it had been notified of around 16,000 prisoners of war and civilians who had been detained by both sides.
Shortly after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the ICRC created a special bureau of its Central Tracing Agency (CTA), dedicated to searching for those missing on both sides in the conflict.
"Since February 2024, the number of open cases of missing persons has more than doubled, reaching almost 50,000 today," the CTA bureau chief Dusan Vujasanin told reporters in Geneva, adding that the vast majority of the missing were military personnel.
A year ago, the bureau said it was seeking to determine the fate of some 23,000 people who had gone missing in the war, and that it was striving to determine whether they were captured, killed or had lost contact after fleeing their homes.
The aim of the bureau's work, Vujasanin said Thursday, was "to prevent disappearances, search for those who go missing and inform their families as soon as possible".
To date, the bureau has been informed by both sides in the conflict that they had detained around 16,000 prisoners of war and civilians since the start of the full-scale conflict.
"This is not equal to the number of PoWs currently detained," Vujasanin said, pointing out that several thousand prisoners had been released since the start of the war.
The CTA bureau plays the role of a neutral intermediary between the parties for information about missing persons, but it also works to search for the missing.
Vujasanin highlighted that much of the Red Cross network was working together to help find those who had gone missing.
"Today, more than 80 Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies and ICRC delegations around the world are working together to support families looking for their missing loved ones in relation to the Russia–Ukraine armed conflict and provide them with answers as soon as possible," Vujasanin said.