"Hello, parents! I am here and doing fine. I am doing pretty good. Dima. This note, which was handwritten on a little piece of paper, is the sole communication Dmytro Khyliuk, also known as Dima, has left Halyna and Vasyl Khyliuk since he was abducted by Russian forces over two years ago.
The Ukrainian journalist was taken into custody in March 2022 while Kozarovychi, his hamlet north of Kiev, was under occupation. The 49-year-old correspondent for the Ukrainian Independent Information Agency was sent to Russia, as far as his parents are aware, and is currently detained there even though, according to his attorney, he has never been found guilty or faced charges.
According to the Ukrainian authorities, thousands of citizens who were detained arbitrarily by Russia and kept in jail for years are similar to Dima. Although 1,700 cases have been officially recognized by Kyiv, human rights researchers believe the true figure is five to seven times higher.People are still being detained in areas under Russian occupation, according to the Ukrainian Ombudsman's office, which estimates that 37,000 Ukrainians—adults and children who are not in the military—are missing. The number of inmates cannot be reliably
In violation of international humanitarian law, a large number of the imprisoned have been transferred to prisons located far within Russia, where they are housed among criminals and POWs. About 100 detention centers in Russia and the seized territories of Ukraine are home to civilians, according to human rights organizations. Several of these facilities have been created or extended especially to house them.
Dmytro Lubinets, the human rights commissioner for Ukraine, told CNN in Kyiv that "the Russians want to recognize a lot of them as military combatants and grant them prisoner of war status... the major purpose being (to develop) a bank of POWs for exchanges." According to Lubinets, admitting civilians from Ukraine as prisoners of war would be against the law and harmful since it would increase the likelihood that Ukrainians living in seized territories would be imprisoned and used as negotiating chips.
"These individuals are hostages, not prisoners of war. "I use that word to highlight the fact that the Russian Federation is enslaving civilians," the speaker stated. Hostage-taking is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions, which govern how armed conflicts are to be conducted. People, including civilians, can be interned by warring parties. However, there are tight guidelines about who can be held, why, and how long. Achille Després of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Kiev told CNN that detaining civilians is only "necessary" when it comes to "imperative reasons of security." "The rule is that it is not a punishment," Després said.
Russia is accused of war crimes by the Ukrainian government and a number of international organizations for detaining individuals such as Dima. 45 members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) established a special investigation into the matter in February with the goal of determining how to hold Russia accountable because of the serious concerns over Russia's arbitrary detentions of civilians in Ukraine.
which Ukrainian volunteers have since freed and partially restored—the Khyliuks recollected the terror of their son's capture and the mystery surrounding his prolonged detention. Russian forces occupied their house in the first few weeks of the conflict, parked their tank in the lawn, and stole anything of worth. The Khyliuk family was taking refuge at a neighbor's home and would sporadically go outdoors to obtain supplies. Dima and Vasyl were ambushed by a gang of machine gun-wielding Russian soldiers while on one of these excursions.
We were unable to see anything since they taped our eyes and covered our heads with some sort of clothing. Myself and Dima were apart. Then they took us to Dymer a week later. Together, we stayed there for two nights. The cement floor was freezing, and there was no heating. After eight days, Vasyl was freed and said, "I was wearing a winter jacket, but Dima was wearing a light jacket and wellies."
Halyna claimed she was devastated when they failed to return home and realized the Russians must have taken them prisoner. "They grabbed everybody they spotted back then, and they grabbed a lot of people." They tortured those they did not need a little before letting them go. With tears in her eyes, she remarked, "But Dima and six other people have been in prison for two years."
In order to find out about those who are still in custody, many Ukrainian families, authorities, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have to rely on word-of-mouth from former inmates due to Russia's dearth of information.
Based on eyewitness accounts, Anastasiia Pantielieieva, a researcher and journalist for the Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR), a Ukrainian NGO, said that Dima was briefly detained in two improvised detention centers in occupied Ukraine before being transferred to a pre-trial detention center in Novozybkov, in the Bryansk region of Russia. She said that Penal Colony Number 7 in the Vladimir region of Russia was the location of the last known sighting of Dima by a witness. At one point, Pantielieieva said that Russian officials had not verified the information MIHR had received that he would be moved to a different facility in Mordovia, a province of Russia southeast of Moscow.
Despite multiple reports that place Dima in Russian jail facilities, Moscow has consistently denied holding him. In December 2022 and January 2023, the Russian Investigative Committee and the Russian Prison Service in Bryansk formally notified the attorney for Khyliuks that he was not in Russia and that they did not possess any information regarding him. The April 2022 date on Dima's handwritten note was not received by his parents until August of the same year. The Khyliuks then claimed that in May 2023, the ICRC contacted to verify that their son was still alive. However, in a letter to Dima's parents, the Russian Ministry of Defense did not acknowledge that he had been arrested and was being imprisoned in Russia until this past March, two years after his detention.
"In certain instances, even those who are put on trial—public trials, for example, where images from the courtroom have been shown to us—the relatives of the individuals in question would have no official documentation attesting to the fact that the individuals are on Russian Federation territory," Pantielieieva stated. According to international humanitarian law, the ICRC is entitled to frequent access to detainees during times of conflict in order to ensure that they are receiving humane treatment and to reunite them with their families. The individual must also be permitted to challenge the decision and be informed of the reason for their internment.
According to Ukrainian Defense Intelligence officials spoke, the Russian National Guard and the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) are primarily responsible for the arrests and detentions of civilians in Ukraine. . In addition, requested information about the specific cases mentioned in this story from the Main Directorate of the General Staff (GRU), the Russian ombudsman's office, the Directorate of Special Programs of the President of the Russian Federation, and the Russian ministries of defense and interior. They have not responded.
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