Oleg Kotenko, Ukraine’s Commissioner for Persons Missing in Special Circumstances, has said about 7,000 Ukrainian soldiers are missing in action.

Kotenko told Suspilne Media that some of the missing soldiers were in captivity as of Monday.

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“If we are talking about the military, let’s understand who the military is. There is the Supreme Court, there is the National Guard, there are border guards, there are SBU and these are different institutions. They are not included in the figure given by the APU. The AFU gives data on 2,000 missing soldiers. Our call center has approximately 7,200 people. For example, the regiment ‘Azov’ is the National Guard (subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs – ed.) and there are also missing persons. They did not get in touch with their relatives when they left Azovstal,” Kotenko said.

“We know that they were taken to Russia. First, you need to know how many people there are. If there are more than a hundred of them, then we understand that almost the entire battalion is in captivity. There is still no contact with them, so they are still missing. Sooner or later, they will be on the exchange list and they will return home. This is the case when we know for sure that the missing are alive.”

Both Russia and Ukraine began to capture opposing soldiers merely weeks into the invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

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After Ukraine captured about 600 Russian soldiers in March, some of them voiced their opposition to the invasion of Ukraine.

“It feels terrible to realize our mistake. It will take years, decades, centuries to repair relations,” a Russian prisoner of war told CNN. “I wish I could sink into the earth and vanish.”

Ukrainian officials announced the largest prisoner exchange with Russia on June 29. Ukraine received over 144 of its soldiers taken as prisoners of war.