Ombudsman's Office received over 16 thousand appeals about missing people - Denysova
The Office of the Ombudsman of Ukraine has already received more than 16,000 complaints about missing Ukrainians.
According to Censor.NЕТ, this was reported by the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Lyudmila Denysova in an interview with Suspilne.
She noted that missing-persons appeals are the highest of all the requests her office receives.
"At the top of the list is the search for missing persons. Next is something bombed, destroyed. Other issues are humanitarian corridors, aid. But most are searches. We're already looking for more than 16,000 people," Denysova said.
The Ombudsman added that two thousand applications concern servicemen, and the rest concern civilians. A quarter of them are from Mariupol.
Denysova also said that people also report cases of abduction of Ukrainians by occupants.
"People were sitting in the basement of a bombed-out house - this was back in early March - the orcs came and took them away, almost always without documents. Then they brought them to filtration camps in the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions," the VR Commissioner for Human Rights said.
According to her, those who manage to pass "filtration" are taken by the Russian military to the territory of the Russian Federation. The occupiers do this in areas where there are no Ukrainian checkpoints.
"They transport them through borders where our checkpoints do not exist. First of all it is the Rostov region. According to their data, over 700 thousand people crossed the border there. Then there is the Belgorod region. They also take them to the Crimea," Denysova explained.
According to the Ombudsman, Ukrainians who left for Russia in their own cars crossed the border voluntarily. According to the Russian Federation, we are talking about 96 thousand cars. She noted that these people probably took the opportunity to get to Europe.
"But they moved on, they just couldn't get out of the occupied territories through Ukraine. And therefore, I think, they took the opportunity to leave through Russia to the states of the European Union. Because my ombudsman colleagues from other countries had appeals from citizens of Mariupol, Kharkiv and other cities of Ukraine, who left by their own transport", - said the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada.
