15,000 people considered missing in Ukraine

Aliona Verbytska, an adviser to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Russia had confirmed that it was holding more than 3,000 prisoners of war, Report informs referring to Bloomberg.

She said 15,000 people were missing, many of them civilians.

Verbytska, in her capacity as ombudsperson for the rights of Ukrainian soldiers, underscored the discrepancy between the number of confirmed POWs and the number still missing.

“We do not know what happened to them. Whether they are also Russian prisoners of war, have been taken from Russian-occupied territories or possibly killed,” Verbytska said.

She assailed what she called the “very poor” cooperation of Russian agencies, with regards to dealing with prisoners of war.