Dozens of Ukrainian officials, journalists detained, disappeared — UN

Dozens of Ukrainian officials, journalists and activists have been detained or forcibly disappeared by invading Russian forces, the UN says, warning that some cases resembled “hostage-taking.”

Since Russia invaded Ukraine just over a month ago, the United Nations rights office said it had documented the arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance of 22 local Ukrainian officials, 13 of whom had subsequently been released.

The most famous case was perhaps the mayor of Ukraine’s southern city of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, who Ukrainian authorities said was abducted by occupying Russian forces and held for several days before being released.

“This does seem to be a pattern that is occurring in areas that are occupied by the Russian Federation,” says Matilda Bogner, who is the UN rights office’s representative in Ukraine.

“Forces of the Russian Federation are going specifically to detain, and do not inform relatives and others where they are taking people,” she told journalists in Geneva via video link from Uzhhorod in western Ukraine.

“That does in some cases appear to be a form of hostage-taking.”

Bogner says 15 journalists and civil society activists “who vocally opposed the invasion” in several regions had also been taken.