For Ukraine, for their Freedom and Ours ! - CSO
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians detained by Russia: For Ukraine and Ukrainian associations launch a campaign to break the silence
"For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours" joins forces with three Ukrainian organizations, including Return Freedom, to alert Europe to one of the most overlooked war crimes of the conflict: the captivity of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians in the hands of Russia.
ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN LE MONDE
Faustine Vincent dedicates an article to the launch of our campaign in the Le Monde article " War in Ukraine: an international campaign raises the alarm about the fate of thousands of detained Ukrainian civilians ", published on May 23, 2026
Article summary:
The figure is staggering.
According to the Ukrainian Ombudsman's office, more than 16,000 civilians have been arrested in the occupied territories—Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Crimea—and are being illegally detained by Russia. Human rights NGOs estimate the number to be in the tens of thousands. According to the UN, these men and women are subjected to systematic torture. Since the beginning of the war, only 409 civilians have returned from captivity.
These people are not prisoners of war: they are hostages.
They were not arrested for what they did, but for what they represent—Ukrainian identity, its memory, its resistance. Many have been held incommunicado for years, without communication, without legal basis, erased from society. This is precisely how Russia seeks to conceal its crimes.
Inviting cities to refuse to be forgotten
Faced with this silence, our campaign invites municipalities in France, French-speaking Belgium, and French-speaking Switzerland to each sponsor one or two detainees—to give them back a name, a face, a presence in the public sphere. The goal: 100 municipalities sponsoring 200 hostages by the end of 2026. One hundred cities to begin building a European civic shield.
Two initial faces embody this mobilization:
Oleh Shevandin , 62, activist and kung-fu champion, held incommunicado since 2015, whose wife Larysa Shevandina chairs Return Freedom and has been leading this fight for eleven years;
Anastasia Hloukhovska , a 32-year-old journalist, arrested in Melitopol in August 2023, forcibly disappeared without official charge.
Le Monde is dedicating an article to our campaign today — a valuable recognition for making this cause heard at the European level.