Kidnapping of civilians: Russia’s war of intimidation
The Russian occupation deliberately kidnapped civilians, journalists and politicians in order to break down the Ukrainian resistance in the occupied territories.
Adam Vojtenko (name changed) from the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol, who will soon be 60, was on his way to the hospital because of his heart condition. He got on a bus, which was stopped a little later by Russian military and police forces. Vojtenko is pulled out. Friends who happen to drive by see him for the last time, standing on the side of the road. He has been missing since the end of March, explains his daughter. Her biggest concern is his health and the medication he has to take.
The motive is unclear. Vojtenko never touched a weapon and only helped to alleviate the emergency there years ago as a military volunteer in the Donbass region, says the daughter. After the Russian invasion at the end of February, he was supposed to flee. His age and health were of no use to the Ukrainian territorial defense.
One thing is clear: he was on the so-called kidnapping lists of the Russian occupiers. Now Vojtenko’s wife is probably on one too. Friends told her that, and they also warned her husband. She can no longer flee from Melitopol — the city where even the mayor was kidnapped in front of the surveillance cameras. They would betray their papers at Russian checkpoints.
It’s just one of many kidnapping cases. At the request of SRF, the UN human rights mission in Ukraine wrote that 125 cases had been counted between the beginning of the war and April 11, including 102 men and 23 women. Of these abductees, 34 victims have since been released and three have been found dead. The UN mission fears that the actual number of kidnapping victims may be higher than this total.
Different assessments of the number of kidnappings
There were 125 cases of kidnapping up to April 11 alone. The Ukrainian human rights organization ZMINA estimates that more than 50 people have been kidnapped or disappeared. Current figures from the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties (CCL) even estimate 139 kidnappings, including 26 women. The head of CCL, Oleksandra Matviichuk, tells SRF Investigativ that there can be many more. The numbers of your organization are only “the tip of the iceberg”. The UN mission also assumes that there are unreported cases.
Regions such as Kyiv and Cherson are particularly affected. The aim of the kidnappings is obviously strategic: to break the resistance of the population, but also to be able to exchange kidnapped politicians for prisoners of war.
What happens after the kidnapping? This can be reconstructed in the case of the Ukrainian journalist Oleh Baturin. He was detained for eight days between March 12 and 20 and said he was ill-treated. According to research by SRF Investigativ, he was most likely held in a new, converted pre-trial detention center in Kherson. This facility was taken over by Russian police and military forces just days before Baturin’s disappearance. This was reported by Lyudmila Denisova, Ombudsman for Human Rights in Ukraine.
Mattia Nelles, Ukraine expert and political analyst, sees Baturin’s kidnapping as emblematic of many other kidnappings he has followed. Baturin’s case is exemplary in a series of kidnappings of political officials and officials, local MPs and journalists, all intended to be intimidated and/or broken. These included features such as being kidnapped on the street, tortured and then released. “His kidnapping was part of a larger wave of intimidation,” says Nelles.
The motive behind Baturin’s kidnapper goes beyond his work as a journalist, thinks Oleksandra Matviichuk from the Ukrainian human rights organization CCL. “The main reason was a strategic purge to liquidate active minorities and so quickly gain control of the region.”
The methods of targeted kidnapping and torture are already known from the occupation of Donbass and Crimea, explains political analyst Nelles. «We are at the beginning of this repression. The Russians are in the process of establishing people’s republics. They’re going after people systematically, and they’re just getting started.”
What Russia says about the allegations of kidnapping often remains unclear. In individual cases, Russian officials have confirmed the arrest of local politicians, in the case of Melitopol Mayor Fedorov was labeled a terrorist.
Russian kidnapping lists: According to information from US security services, Russian forces are compiling lists of Ukrainians they are specifically looking for. That describes a letter from the US ambassador to the United Nations. According to political analyst Mattia Nelles, this system suggests that the Russian secret service FSB was also involved in the kidnappings.
