09:43 / 14.02.2025

The number of people missing in the war in Ukraine has exceeded 50,000

^{Photo: Reuters}
The number of people missing in the conflict in Ukraine has more than doubled in the past year, reaching 50,000, Reuters reported, citing the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“The ICRC documented 23,000 missing people last year. A year later, this number has more than doubled: the committee has registered about 50,000 missing people,” said Dusan Vujasanin, head of the agency’s Central Bureau for Tracing Missing Persons.

According to him, almost 90 percent of the missing in Ukraine are military personnel. The ICRC did not provide statistics on the nationality of the missing. The organization noted an “exponential growth” — on average, from 1,000 to 5,000 people are missing every month. This is due to the monthly escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian war and the improvement of reporting mechanisms (for example, an online documentation system for the families of the missing is now operational).

The ICRC has been coordinating the search for those missing as a result of the war in Ukraine since March 2022, through the Central Tracing Bureau. Both Ukraine and Russia provide the organization with information on the missing.

Last week, the Coordination Headquarters for Work with Prisoners of War in Ukraine announced that in January there was a record number of requests from Russian citizens for missing servicemen of the Russian army. According to the headquarters, in January 2025, 8,548 requests were submitted by relatives of Russian servicemen within the framework of the “I Want to Find” project - this is 22% more than in December 2024 and is the highest figure for the entire project. During the project, requests were received for more than 60 thousand missing servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces. This figure does not take into account the dead and is 2-3 times less than the real number of missing, as it is based only on official requests.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan that 45.1 thousand Ukrainian servicemen have been killed since the start of the war, and the number of wounded has reached 390 thousand.