Ukrainians are long used to seeing their soldiers returned dead, wounded or in prisoner exchanges – but when around 250 go missing over the course of a couple of weeks, and on Russian territory, relatives begin asking questions. "They sent them in three or four at a time, and almost none came back," said 47-year-old Oksana, from a village in the western Ukrainian region of Ivano-Frankivsk, whose husband is among them.
According to her, the hapless Ukrainian servicemen never stood much of a chance: "The Russians were waiting for them with glide bombs, rockets and drones. They threw everything they had at them." And she is not alone. On a sunny Saturday morning last month, scores of Ukrainian wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of the soldiers who went missing duringUkraine's Spring 2025 Belgorod offensive gathered in the centre of Kyiv to bring attention to their cause.
They call themselves The Union of Families of Demydivka, in reference to the village in the Russian border region of Belgorod around which most of the fighting took place. After meeting and organising on social media, the group of 200 mostly women began coming to Kyiv to demand answers from army commanders. "The official response has been two killed, the rest missing in action," she said.
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But surviving soldiers from the campaign whom the group has been able to contact paint a more vivid picture. Oksana said: "The few that did return spoke of a nightmare. They said it was total chaos. Men losing contact with their comrades and wandering right into the hands of the enemy."
One woman among the demonstrators said she'd heard the Russians had killed all the missing soldiers and burned their bodies. "They said they had seen large fires in the area shortly after the fighting and had been told by fleeing locals that someone was burning bodies."
And according to Oksana, the chaos was due to bad planning combined with a chronic shortage of troops. Her husband Volodya, whom she described as "a real family man", had immediately signed up to fight when war broke out in February 2022, but at 44 years of age, had been assigned to guarding aircraft for most of the war.
Then, at the end of 2024, his and other air force units with no front-line combat experience were dissolved and subsumed into the 225th Separate Assault Regiment to serve in infantry companies. "He was sent to Sumy Region on March 16, intoRussiaon the 18 and was killed on the 20," she said, adding, "He had only been given two weeks training and hardly knew anyone in his unit."
The army informed her in a telephone call on March 28 that her husband was missing in action. Oksana and her two adult daughter immediately took action themselves.
Source: Daily Express :: World Feed
