According to the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, as of February 2025, 3,749 Ukrainian servicemen and only 173 civilians were returned as part of the exchanges.
The exact number of Ukrainian soldiers who remain in Russian captivity is currently impossible to determine due to Russia’s refusal to provide information, the denial of access to prisoners by international organizations, and ongoing hostilities.
“It is very difficult to talk about the number because the fighting is still ongoing, the occupation is still ongoing. Every day people disappear, they are kidnapped, captured. Therefore, every day, in fact, this number increases. We still have people who are considered missing. The International Red Cross does not confirm them, our government agencies do not confirm them, but according to unconfirmed information from various sources, we understand that this person is probably in captivity,” said Maria Klymyk, a journalist and documentary filmmaker at the Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR), in a commentary for Radio Liberty.
“In principle, Russia does not recognize that it holds civilians in captivity. This is despite the fact that we see and have confirmation of this from the testimonies of the released prisoners of war. They say that civilians and military are held under the same conditions, in the same places, sometimes in the same cells. That is, in fact, these civilians are being held as prisoners of war, but Russia does not communicate the fact that it is holding civilians captive. They have no status. They were simply kidnapped,” – says Klymyk.
Regarding civilian hostages, the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, said that as of December 2024, more than 16,000 Ukrainian citizens were held in Russian captivity. This number includes those who have been captured since 2014, including in the occupied Crimea.
At the same time, Mykhailo Savva, an expert from the Center of Civil Liberties, suggests that about 7,000 civilians are currently in captivity.
“There are no exact figures on the number of such people. Lubinets gives a figure that I believe is close to the maximum. I am guided by the figure of about 7 thousand civilians. There are more such people than prisoners of war in any case,” – Savva emphasized.
Human rights activists point out that according to international humanitarian law, prisoners of war and civilians should have different status and treatment. However, Russia fundamentally does not comply with this.
The Crimean Tatar Resource Center reports that during the occupation of Crimea, Russia has recorded at least 409 cases of politically motivated prosecution in criminal “cases”, 243 of them are representatives of the Crimean Tatar people.
The CTRC emphasizes that Crimean political prisoners illegally sentenced to long prison terms should be included in future exchanges. We call on the international community to increase pressure on Russia and demand the immediate release of all Crimean political prisoners!