Rising Russian inquiries reveal scale of missing soldiers in Ukraine
In January, Ukraine reported a record number of inquiries from Russians about missing Russian army soldiers, according to the Ukrainian Coordinating Staff for Prisoners of War's Telegram channel.
Based on the staff's data, in the first month of 2025, the "I Want to Find" project received 8,548 inquiries from relatives of Russian military personnel.
This is 22 percent more than in December, marking the highest number in the history of the initiative.
Russians are searching for their loved ones
In total, since the project began, more than 60,000 inquiries about missing soldiers in the Russian army have been submitted.
The statement noted that this number does not include the deceased and represents only a portion of the actual number of missing, as it is based solely on official requests.
The actual number of missing Russians is estimated to be 2-3 times higher.
The staff confirmed that 1,790 soldiers in Russian captivity were listed on the search lists as part of the project.
408 of these soldiers have already been exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners of war. It was emphasized that the steady increase in inquiries in the "I Want to Find" project indicates the significant losses faced by the Russian army in the war against Ukraine.
Meanwhile, according to "Mediazona," in 2024, Russian military units widely submitted applications to classify participants in the invasion of Ukraine as missing or dead. This allowed the command to remove them from the personnel list, paving the way for recruiting new soldiers.
Journalists discovered more than 6,200 such cases, and thousands more applications from the second half of 2024 were classified, suggesting a potential connection to soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
Putin's relative let it slip; colleagues reacted
In December 2024, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anna Cywileva, a niece of Vladimir Putin, revealed during a round table in the State Duma that at least 48,000 Russians participating in the war against Ukraine are listed as missing without a trace.
The chairman of the Duma's defense committee, Andrei Kartapolov, who was present at the meeting, urged the deputies not to disclose this data.
"This is sensitive, confidential information. When the final documents are drawn up, we must ensure these figures do not appear anywhere," he said.
