Two thousand five hundred or three thousand kilometers from Paris, in the occupied Donbas, or isolated within the Russian Empire, in Olevnika and Tanganrog, sixteen thousand Ukrainian civilians are being arbitrarily detained in Putin's prisons. A citizens' campaign is being launched to break their silence—through municipal sponsorship. Here is the opening text of the launch of "Together Let's Save the Ukrainian Hostages," led by the association For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours! (For Ukraine), the Union of Ukrainians in France, and the Ukrainian movements "RETURN FREEDOM" and Civilni Vilni.

Sixteen thousand people.

Sixteen thousand Ukrainian civilians—women, men, journalists, teachers, priests, mayors, ordinary citizens—arbitrarily detained by Russia. Sixteen thousand lives torn from their loved ones, locked away somewhere, two thousand kilometers from here, in silence.

It's time to start breaking this silence.

What they are

They are not combatants. They are civilians. They have committed no crime. They were arrested for who they are, not for what they have done.

Journalists, because they reported the news. Teachers, because they refused the Russian curriculum imposed on their students. Mayors, because they had been democratically elected. Priests, because they rejected the corrupt Church of Moscow. Parents, because they refused to have their children Russified. Athletes who were role models, civilian volunteers.

Ordinary people, attached to their language, their flag, their country.

Why the word "hostage"?

Why are we talking about hostages? Because the word has a precise legal meaning. The 1979 International Convention, the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Rome Statute: a hostage is a person captured to exert pressure on a third party — a government, a population, an international organization.

Russia is not holding these civilians for what they have done. It is holding them as bargaining chips and as instruments of terror, as leverage in future negotiations to obtain territorial, military, and diplomatic concessions. This is hostage-taking in the strictest sense of international law. That is to say, a war crime.

This crime has a history. Every time Ukraine has attempted to emerge as a free and European nation—the People's Republic of 1917 and the brief cultural renaissance of the 1920s cut short by the Holodomor and Stalinist terror, the dissidents thrown into the Gulag in the 1960s, and now Maidan Ukraine, under attack since 2014—the Empire has offered the same response: to erase a people by first erasing those who embody it. Its teachers, its journalists, its priests, its mayors, its local elected officials. The enforced disappearances we denounce today in the occupied territories are not collateral damage of war: they are its very design.

What we are launching

Tonight, therefore, together with our partners—the Union of Ukrainians in France, and our Ukrainian friends from Return Freedom and Civilni Vilni / Civils Libres—we are launching the “Together Let’s Save the Ukrainian Hostages” campaign. It is open to all organizations that identify with the defense of Ukrainian prisoners.

Four objectives. Simple. Clear.

Breaking the silence on the occupied territories — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Crimea. Kherson, martyred but resistant. Europe must know what is happening there: the forced disappearances, the Russification, the daily terror.

Bring the hostages out of anonymity. Give them a name, a face, a story. No hostage forgotten.

Demand access for the ICRC, the UN, the OSCE to places of detention, and medical care for prisoners, many of whom are seriously ill or injured.

Securing their release. Making the release of civilian hostages and the return of deported children a prerequisite for any negotiations with Moscow. No peace agreement without them.

Four areas of action

How to achieve this? Through four complementary approaches.

First, public events and films . Two documentaries are available for screening: Izolyatsiya by Igor Minaiev, about the illegal detention center in Donetsk, and Prisoners: The System of Terror by Evgenya Chirikova, about the detention of Ukrainian civilians. Their directors are available to participate in discussions, either in person or via videoconference.

Next—and this is the operational heart of our system—is the sponsorship of hostages by municipalities . A French, Belgian, or Swiss municipality commits to sponsoring a Ukrainian civilian prisoner by name, with the written consent of their family. It officially demands their release and gives them lasting public visibility. Our goal: one hundred cities, two hundred sponsored hostages by the end of 2026. Each municipal council that adopts a sponsorship resolution makes a face, a name, visible—and places its city alongside a hostage.

Then, an open letter to the President of the Republic , asking him to bring this cause to the highest European and international level.

Finally, a public commitment from the French, Belgian, Swiss and European Union governments: that no ceasefire would make sense without the release of civilian hostages and the return of deported children.

What we are asking of you

Many of you are here tonight. You are elected officials, activists, journalists, citizens, Ukrainians in France, friends of Ukraine. This campaign cannot succeed without you.

If you are an elected official: bring the sponsorship to your city council. If you know an elected official: talk to them tomorrow. If you are a journalist: write about these hostages. If you are a citizen: organize a screening, a meeting in your city, contact your elected officials. And everyone: mobilize your network.

One hundred cities. Two hundred sponsored hostages. A name, a face, a voice for each one.

This is what Sylvie Rollet and I call "the beginning of a European civic shield".

An announcement

One last thing. And this is an announcement.

The first official request for contact regarding sponsorship has just been sent to the city of Paris.

Paris, the first city approached. Paris, which could, in the coming weeks, become the first major European capital to sponsor two Ukrainian civilian hostages: Anastasia Hloukhovska, a journalist imprisoned for three years, and Oleg Shevandin, who has been missing in Kremlin jails since 2015 — and pave the way for a hundred other cities, in France and in Europe.

So tonight, we ask for three things, three words.

To know. To speak. To act.

Know these hostages. Speak out about them, everywhere you go. Take action in your city, starting this week. Contact the campaign by writing to appelpourlukraine@gmail.com

Glory to Ukraine.