Red Cross data reveal devastating impact of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, affecting civilians and military
The war between and left tens of thousands of dead and injured, as well as hundreds of thousands of refugees. But there is another fact of the conflict that shows the devastating humanitarian effects of war between the 2 countries: according to the (International Red Cross Committee), there are at least 48,700 missing people since February 2022, when the current phase of war began.
The data includes civilians and military on both sides. “This number comes from people who seek us in search of someone. It can be a husband looking for his wife, a sister looking for a brother, a father about his son. They do not know where the person is. It can be a civilian or soldier fighting on the front lines, but their whereabouts are unknown.”said the CIABOO spokesman at Ukraine, Patrick Griffiths, in an interview with Agência Brasil.
The missing, according to the CIA, have grown since the beginning of the conflict. In December 2024, for example, the missing people totaled 43,000 people. The international humanitarian body, nevertheless, discovered the whereabouts of at least 12,500 people.
“Through our work and our ability to talk to people in Russia and Ukraine, we were able to provide some answer to families. It is not always the answer they expected, that is, the loved one has been confirmed as a prisoner of war in one of the two countries or was tragically dead. So it is not always what families expected, but yet it is a conclusion (for the search),” Griffiths said.
According to him, sometimes it takes years to know what happened to the missing, even after the end of a conflict.
Conflict today
The CAVER spokesman said there is no sign of cooling the conflict and that their employees receive information from bombing and on the dead. “I’m in Kiev, away from battle fronts, but Saturday (5.abr.2025)), my colleagues and I were awakened around 5 am, for the sound of a series of explosions. I’ve been here since June last year and I don’t remember hearing so many explosions.”afirmou Griffiths.
He explains that, even today, four years after the Russian invasion of new Ukrainian territories, what the CIAP employees witness is moving. “Almost every day, I see reports and hear from my colleagues about attacks that take the lives of civilians. We see houses being destroyed every day, we see children dying and injured. Civilians should not be paying the price for this conflict.”
“Despite all conversation about peace and negotiations, which is a positive thing, our focus, like a humanitarian organization, is the humanitarian needs now, everyday, and there are still people who are being killed or wounded, who had their homes destroyed, who lost their livelihood, who have lost their families. There are people who had their lives destroyed and changed forever,” lamented.
Prisoners
One of the CIAB tasks in the Ukraine conflict is to check the situation of prisoners of war and the situation in which they are being kept in Russian and Ukrainian arrests. But even the organization’s neutrality situation does not guarantee that it has access to all facilities where these people are imprisoned.
“We have been able to visit thousands of prisoners of war on both sides. Access is not symmetrical. We have been able to make much more visits to Russian prisoners in Ukraine than on the other side. But we will continue to defend an improvement in access and we are always in conversation with the authorities on both sides to try to improve our humanitarian access.”these.
With information from.
