Hi, this is Michelle. Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine is nearing its third year, with a staggering human toll.

New data from a unit set up by the International Committee of the Red Cross to document cases of missing soldiers and civilians reveals the scale of the situation. The fate and whereabouts of 50,000 are currently unknown – an unprecedented situation, according to the Central Tracing Agency bureau on Russia and Ukraine's war.

Michelle Langrand

14.02.2025

On our radar

Photo article

A woman reacts as Ukrainian prisoners of war arrive following a prisoner swap at an undisclosed location in Ukraine, 5 February 2025. (Keystone/EPA/STR)

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) revealed on Thursday that the number of open cases of missing persons linked to Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine has more than doubled in the past year, now reaching about 50,000.

“The number of missing persons is increasing exponentially,” said Dusan Vujasanin, head of the ICRC’s Central Tracing Agency (CTA) Bureau for the Ukraine-Russia war, noting that the number of monthly notifications to his division had surged from 1,000 to 5,000.

Calling the situation “unprecedented,” the Red Cross official attributed the rise to the conflict’s intensification and, to a lesser extent, to heightened awareness among families about the ICRC’s tracing services. Based in Geneva, the CTA has helped families track their loved ones for 150 years. In March 2022, it established a dedicated unit to handle cases related to the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Read the full story on Geneva Solutions.

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In case you missed it

Photo article

Lawyer Wilfredo Robles speaking at a conference about the detention of former Peruvian president Pedro Castillo held at the Maison Internationale des Associations in Geneva, 12 February 2025. (Geneva Solutions/Paula Dupraz-Dobias)

Nudging Peru from Geneva. Wilfredo Robles, a lawyer representing the deposed Peruvian president Pedro Castillo, was in Geneva on Wednesday to renew a request to a UN human rights working group to condemn the detention of the former Indigenous teacher in December 2022 after he attempted to dissolve Congress when it sought to impeach him. The petition, initially filed in March 2023 with the human rights office’s working group on arbitrary detention, remained frozen for 15 months while the government “did everything” to keep it from being considered, Robles told a conference at the Maison Internationale des Associations.

The lawyer said that the much-awaited start of discussions on Castillo’s case at the UN led judges in Peru to advance the date of his trial to 4 March in a “deliberate manoeuvre intended to pronounce a verdict before the working group makes a decision”. He claims the former president is a victim of “lawfare” by the state intent on using every possible legal instrument to attack the defendant.

Follow our coverage of international condemnation of human rights abuses committed during anti-government protests in Peru following Castillo’s impeachment.

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