Families with peace of missing fear of Ukraine will not bring them home

Tatiana Popovytch, had contacted every institution that he could think. After firing on the car, he opened fire on his son Vladislav’s car, he missed him with a bullet on his feet. He looked at the mass graves, reviewed the pictures of the dead, followed by exhumations. After a month he did not know anything but he started.

Then called a stranger.

Serhii was released only from a Russian prison in the Kursk. In the morning roll call, prisoners could not see each other, but they could report each person’s full name and home villages. Serhii remembered as many names and place as he can – in 10 – and on May 9, 2022, he called Tatiana to say he heard his son’s voice.

Like Vladislav, Serhii, when hundreds of civilians began from this area, the war was a civil captured from Bucha at the beginning of the war. Vladislav was 29 right now. Now 32, he is still in prison in the Kursk. Serhii could not explain why Tatiana was released and there was no Vladislav. Tatiana was pleased to hear his son alive. “I was so happy, I lost the traffic that I received,” he said.

Three years later, afterwards, Tatyana, Tatyana was remotely from a cafe to his son, he was still in a cafe: Two letters were written in Russian, well-nourished and well-nourished and good care. Each letter took three months to reach Tatiana, he complicated his son to his son at any point.

“My son is very soft and sensitive,” he said, with a painful expression of a parent who could not protect his child. He looked at the pictures of Vlad Ballroom Dancing – a hobby of young age. “It’s so sensitive.” “I’m worried about it will lose the mind there.”

According to the Ukrainian government, about 16,000 civilians are still captivated in Russian prisons, after being abducted by the occupying army – if more than 20,000 Ukrainian children are taken to Russia.

There are also fears between thousands of relatives, and among the progress towards the peace talks can be forgotten or lost in this process. And these fears seem to be right.

The Geneva Convention has a well-known mechanism to exchange prisoners, but there is such a mechanism for the return of the seized civilians, even how to return home and get an explanation to follow actors and international officials.

“In the official meetings, no one in the ombudsman’s room or elsewhere, no one talks about civilians in ceasefire,” Yulia Hripun, 23-year-old Yulia Hripun, was abducted from a village in west of Kiev.

A few weeks after learning his father’s captivity, Yulia launched a new organization to release all civilians to connect with another daughter of an imprisoned Ukraine.

The Group met with UN representatives, the European Parliament, the governments of several EU countries and the US Embassy in Ukraine.

“We talked to them, but this came to do not understand what will happen in an honest way,” Yulia said to meet Americans.

“The only thing they say, Trump’s is interested in the deported children, and maybe civilians can somehow fit into this category. But they are different categories.”

Concerned about the caught civilians and other relatives, the highest Ukrainian officials do not claim to be stronger.

“I do not see a true, effective approach to return civil prisoners to Ukraine,” said Dmytro Lubinets, the country’s human rights ombudsman. “We have no legal basis or mechanisms to return us,” he said.

Russia, which makes the problem, is correcting criminal charges against some of the captives during the occupation.

“And when I see these charges, often ‘action against a special military operation’,” Lubinets. “Can you dream of opening an investigation into the territory of Ukraine, Ukraine against a Ukrainian civilian?”

In May, Russia left 120 civil prisoners and more stock exchanges are expected in the larger exchanges of the war. However, the numbers are still stated that tens of thousands, adults and children were seized. And great uncertainty, negotiations are left out of the way to peace.

“You want to believe that he cannot believe that” a bus driver near Petro Seria, 61, 61, the prisoner of the prisoner was taken longer than three years ago. ”

Petro and his wife live in a container type temporary residence in IRPIN because the houses were destroyed. He has been thinking that every time the phone rings can be Petro Artm for three years.

“The presence of a letter that lives, but it’s something to hear his voice … It would be really a joy that is alive.”

Families live so hopelessly. The imagination is they received to see what they love again. Although this is afraid of the Russian captivity to cause sustainable damage.

The son of a prom-dancing son Vladislav, Tatiana, who was abducted from bucha, now said he was shaken to hear Russian, “because this is the language he tortured.”

There is also the issue of what has been missed. During the arrest of Vladislav, his father crossed a sin to protect his son and passed to 50.

All Tatiana can, can be made mentally for the return of Vladislav. According to him, “I feel every feeling,” he said. “It’s what I think about it. Every time, every day.”

Daria Mitituk contributed to this report. Photos Joel Gunter