The Geneva Conventions, the rules encoding the treatment of POWs, states that countries at war should allow independent monitors unlimited access to captives and permit them to send or receive letters. Russia has a spotty record when it comes to both, the U.N. has said.
Tsymbaliuk said Russia refuses to confirm thousands of prisoners’ captivity or whereabouts, leaving their desperate relatives guessing daily whether their loved ones were still “on earth or in Heaven.”
The U.N. also listed cases of torture of Russian POWs captured by Ukrainians but noted those stopped once they entered the prison system. Independent monitors have unrestricted access to Russian POWs.
Kateryna Nazarii, 32, said she had not spoken or heard from her husband since he was taken captive near Mariupol 830 days ago.
Shortly after he went missing, she found out he was in Russian hands from a harrowingly explicit video on a pro-Kremlin Telegram channel.
Since then, she learned from released Ukrainian prisoners that he is being held in a facility in Luhansk in occupied Ukraine, though Russian authorities have repeatedly denied having any knowledge of him.
Nazarii said she feels a surge of fear each time her phone rings, worried it will bring news of her husband’s death.
“We are returning to the Middle Ages,” she said. “If the world stays silent now, Russia will take it as a sign it can continue with impunity.”